A Tangled Web
by SChimes
Summary: The suffocating security,the letters and testimony are behind them. But closing that chapter came at a price, and while some anxieties were put to rest, others arose. With increased pressure and questionable cases at work, and troubled waters at home, Sharon is finding it hard to strike a new balance for her and Rusty. And misconceptions and miscommunication always bring trouble...
1. Dawn

**Still suffering from hiatus-induced withdrawals and neuroses. This website is my Dr. Joe, basically ;). Thanks to all of you out there writing and reading, you're all wonderful. **

**So after swearing up and down that I was done with multi-chapters, I managed to stay away for, what, a month? Less, probably. I present to you the results of my utter lack of self control...**

**A Tangled Web (1)**

"_Sorry about the early wake-up call, Captain._"

Sitting up in her bed, Sharon reached for the lamp on the nightstand. The first light of dawn was just streaming in through the window. "Go ahead, Lieutenant. Did we catch a murder?"

_"…not exactly._" Provenza's doubtful hum made her frown, but before she could ask for clarifications he continued: "_We caught something, alright. But I'd say it's … premature… to call it murder._"

Sharon sighed. She hated the cryptic banter at this early hour. "Is there a victim?"

"_Well – there's a dead guy, yes,_" confirmed Provenza, again with the same dubious tone, "_he's on his way to Morales as we speak. Except I'm not sure that he's a _victim_. He jumped off the Sixth Street bridge around midnight,_" he explained in the end, and Sharon's irritation turned to surprise.

"A suicide?" She was starting to get a headache. "Is there any evidence of foul play?"

"_Not a shred. In fact, there are several people who saw our jumper take the leap all by himself._"

Sharon shook her head; it felt like she was missing something, here. "Lieutenant – if there's no murder, and there's no victim, why did Major Crimes get the call?" It better not have been because the dead man was connected to the Mayor or whatever other high-placed political figure. Pope and Taylor may have scrapped the unfortunately titled 'priority homicide' a long time ago, but Sharon thought that the attitude behind that was still very much in place.

" _– the magic words, the guards at the facility heard 'bomb' and 'everyone' and called in the troops._"

Caught up in her private condemnation of the preferential dispensation of justice, she'd missed part of his explanation, and had to pause to process what she had heard. "Are you saying that this man was involved in some sort of wide-scale bomb threat?"

"_Oh there's no _evidence_ of that_," she could hear Provenza's dry annoyance through the phone. "_The guy just _said_ so. Right before he jumped off a hundred-foot-high bridge… which you'd think might raise some mild concerns about his sanity._"

Sharon agreed wholeheartedly. "Alright, so what about this case makes it a major crime, exactly?" She felt that she was using the word 'case' loosely. Now, Sharon wasn't one to turn down a chance to bring _any_ criminal to justice, only in this situation there was hardly a criminal to speak of, and if they had to follow up on the ravings of every nutcase who ingested, injected or inhaled a little too much on a Saturday night…

"_Bad luck_," the man deadpanned, and Sharon rolled her eyes.

"Lieutenant…"

"_Captain, let me spare you the effort_," said Provenza. "_All the objections you can think of, I've already made to Taylor. Given how I'm _still_ standing here next to a puddle of human entrails, and calling you at six a.m. on a Sunday, you can guess that I've been overruled._"

Sharon sighed, letting her chin drop to her chest. "I'll be there in forty-five minutes."

_"We can meet you at the station,_" the lieutenant offered. "_There's not much left to do here anyway._"

* * *

Sharon let out another sigh as she walked down the hallway to Rusty's room. He wouldn't like being woken up this early, but she didn't want to leave without letting him know, either. Halfway to his room, she changed her mind: she could shower first, then let him know just before she left.

After a shower so quick that it was barely enough to wake her up, she got dressed in a hurry, tempted to just slip on a pair of jeans before she eventually decided on a more business-like pant suit. It was more appropriate, sure, but damn it, she hated donning office armor on a Sunday.

The morning routine out of the way, there was no choice but to walk over and bother Rusty. She needed to leave in less than ten minutes, and it wouldn't have surprised Sharon if it took that long just to get him aware enough to process what she was saying.

His room was dark, the curtains drawn, as usual: Rusty was not exactly a morning person, not that many teenagers were. Sharon smiled at the sight of his shirt thrown inside out over the back of a chair, and the comic book peeking from under the backpack on the floor. He was never going to be the tidiest boy, that much was certain, but she knew that by now the mess was no longer meant as a challenge to her. Having his things lying about simply confirmed the room as his own space... and since coming back home after the week spent at Provenza's house, he'd been hoarding and settling in all over again with a vengeance. It was as though he _wanted_ his things to be scattered and visible in every corner, just to make sure…

Sharon had been letting him get away with some of it, for that reason.

They still had weekly matches on the subject of cleaning up, of course.

She leaned over the bump in the comforter that she recognized as his head, even though only a tuft of blond hair was peeking out. She couldn't help passing her fingers through his hair, then her hand settled somewhere in the general region of his shoulders, and she squeezed slightly.

"Rusty." Her whisper was calm: he'd been jumpy lately, understandably so, and after the first time he'd startled awake with a frightened jump and a panicked look on his face, she'd toned down the wake-up calls. "Rusty..."

Except he'd been slowly relaxing back into a more tranquil state, and with that came the same old resistance to being roused in the mornings. The blond mop moved slightly as she stroked it again, but its owner gave no indication of actually waking up and listening.

"Rusty," Sharon spoke a little louder, though still calm and soothing. "It's me. Wake up for a minute… I've been called out on a case."

He shifted slightly this time, though the rest of his head still didn't emerge from underneath the comforter, and there was a muffled sound: "No."

Sharon smiled, although she wasn't sure whether he was saying 'no' to the idea of waking up, or to her being called out on a case, or just a generic 'no' because that was what one did at six a.m. on a Sunday. "Rusty. I'm going to have to leave for the station, okay? You can go right back to sleep, but I wanted to let you know. Alright?"

Another muffled groan, and his head shifted again.

"I'm going to take that as a yes." She lightly caressed his shoulder again, and she could feel him moving a little, so maybe he was at least partly awake. "Okay, honey. There's plenty of breakfast food in the fridge, and I'll call you a little later when you're awake."

With one last squeeze of his shoulder, she got up, and was about to turn and leave when there was another shift in the lump underneath the comforter, and the tip of his nose peered out on one side.

"…mmtime is it…?" he mumbled, and Sharon's lips curled affectionately.

"Just past six a.m. Go back to sleep."

"Sharon…" Her name came out as a grumbling sigh.

Sharon smiled a little wistfully at the child-like tone, and on an impulse she took a step back toward the bed, and leaned over to kiss the top of his head. "Go back to sleep, Rusty. I'll call you later."

It wasn't a gesture that she would've normally indulged in, but there was something so heartbreakingly endearing about him that she couldn't help it. The last few weeks had been difficult, the two of them swinging all over the place from closeness and reassurances to fits of anxiety and lashing out. But then there were moments like this, when her chest just tightened with emotion and she wanted nothing more than to fix everything and keep the world from ever doing another ounce of harm to him.

As she straightened again, Rusty ducked his nose back under the blanket, squirming slightly, and he might've murmured something but it was so faint that she couldn't make out the words.

Sharon backed out of the room and closed the door, before walking back into the kitchen to finish the last of her coffee. She then slipped on her shoes and grabbed her bag, and when she left she made double sure to lock the apartment properly. The security detail outside the door was gone, of course… but when she knew that Rusty would be home alone like this, she privately wished that she could've kept them.

And that was just one of the reasons that their life hadn't been all roses after the letters nightmare had ended...

* * *

"No ID and no hits so far in the prints database." Lt. Tao pushed his chair back from his desk to get a better view of the rest of the team. "Dr. Morales will try to work on dental records or maybe a facial reconstruction after he performs the autopsy…"

"Until then," Flynn put in, "our best hope is that the crime scene techs find his wallet when they search the extended perimeter." He looked every bit as grumpy as the rest of them, dark circles under his eyes and his hair sticking out a little more than usual. Seven-thirty a.m. was far too early to be already in the swing of things at work. And on a Sunday no less.

Sharon looked at the murder board, which held a couple of grainy pictures of their victim – Provenza had added quotation marks around the word "victim". "Let's also notify local shelters and psychiatric facilities… see if they're missing anyone. Who witnessed the jump?"

Sanchez checked the file in front of him. "Two of the night guards at the storage facility nearby, and a handful of employees from a film crew. The area is used to shoot a lot of stock footage of the city," he explained, "and these guys needed some night-time sequences, so they were there until late tonight."

"Any chance they caught anything on camera?" asked Sharon.

"They caught _everything_ on camera," Tao replied, tapping his monitor. "And the facility has surveillance as well – we've got this from a few different angles. I've been looking at the footage and I can't see anyone else in the frame with our guy."

The Captain nodded. "Let's take a look."

While Tao and Buzz set up a larger screen for everyone to see the footage, she exchanged a glance with Flynn; the lieutenant shook his head and rolled his eyes:

"Saturday night jumpers… this is the kind of thing we had to deal with when I first went out on patrol."

"This man made threats about bombing a public site, before he jumped," she pointed out. "That makes him a special interest case."

"Yeah, probably 'cause he was high. Doesn't make it a major crime."

Sharon's only answer was a noncommittal hum. She couldn't truly disagree, but it wasn't good form to be complaining, either. After all, if _she_ wasn't on board with taking the case seriously, how could she ask her team to be? So she'd have to keep her opinion to herself… but just for the record, yes, the only major crime there was rousing six elite LAPD officers at the crack of dawn on a Sunday to investigate the rantings of a man in a most likely altered state of mind.

"It's that damn meeting on Friday," Flynn continued. "I knew something like this would happen… Mayor meets all the higher-ups in local law enforcement, they spend half a day talking, and we get double the workload as a consequence."

Sykes turned her head to eye him curiously. "What meeting?"

"Someone hasn't been paying attention in class," Provenza drawled. "'Threat prevention agenda', latest buzzwords on everyone's little black books."

"One of the local news agencies recently put out a five-year report showing an increase in violence sprees in public areas," Sanchez provided.

"Right before local elections," added Provenza, "_shockingly_."

Julio shrugged his agreement. "The Mayor feels that our city isn't doing a great job training its law enforcement in how to handle large-scale crises," he told Sykes. "That's what the Friday meeting was about. Increased awareness, proactive measures and so on."

"Oh. I guess it makes sense that they'd want us to look into this guy, then." Noticing everyone's looks of disagreement, Amy cleared her throat. "I mean – if they're worried about an attack on the public…"

Flynn rolled his eyes again. "This guy's probably just a lunatic, not important enough for the FBI or any of the anti-terrorism units to bother."

"But," Tao put in, "they don't want to be seen ignoring this so soon after Friday's meeting …"

" …so they're passing him on to us while they get to enjoy their Sunday brunches," finished Provenza.

"Bastards," Andy grumbled, and no one raised their voice to disagree.

* * *

**This story will contain an actual case, with all the associated mystery and speculation and suspect-chasing, and feature the whole team fairly heavily. Of course there will be healthy doses of Sharon/Rusty drama because I can't help myself. Other elements you'd like to see, let me know as we move along through the chapters. (in the interest of full disclosure, this story will *most likely* not be going in any blatantly romantic directions for any of the characters, but you know I'm a great fan of reading between the lines, so there might be *some* wish fulfillment on that front.)  
**

**Thank you for reading! **


	2. Victim

**Thank you, everyone, for reading, reviewing, following etc.!  
**

**A Tangled Web (2)**

" – hard to tell if it was his pureed brain, his snapped neck and shattered spinal cord, or the iron fence pole sticking through his chest that killed him, technically…" Dr. Morales looked up from the mangled remains on his autopsy table. "But I think it's safe to say that your victim died as a result of the injuries from his jump."

"Shocker." Lt. Flynn gave the Captain a dry sideways glance. Both of them stood on the outer side of the transparent wall, while inside the sterile field the ME, wearing a protective suit, continued to circle the body. "Any evidence that he was a nutcase, yet?"

"You're gonna have to look into his medical files for that." Morales glanced up again and sighed. "…Unless don't know who he is. Figures."

"No ID on him, and the DMV database doesn't recognize half-smashed faces," grumbled Flynn. "We're running the prints but no hits yet. So can you look into his brain or something and confirm that he was just a lunatic, so we can wrap this up and go home?"

"You know, it's difficult to diagnose mental disorders by brain physiology when the brain is _intact_," the doctor commented, "let alone when it looks like chunky chowder and half of it's been scraped off the sidewalk." He rolled his eyes. "I don't know if this man was crazy, if that's what you're asking... although, given that he took a nosedive off a bridge at midnight, I'd say chances are that he had _some_ issues."

"Unfortunately, that's not good enough to write off his warnings as delusions," said the Captain. "We're going to need something tangible before we can file this as a false alarm and move on. Anything that might help us identify him, Doctor?"

There was a brief silence, then Morales' voice came again through the staticy speakers. "No tattoos, distinguishing birthmarks, or implants that I could find… I can try to put together the dental records, but don't hold your breath. Human teeth weren't exactly designed to smash into concrete at fifty miles per hour."

Sharon nodded. "Do what you can." She took a step back and was about to turn and head back upstairs, when the doctor's voice stopped her:

"There is _one_ thing that's kind of weird..."

She turned back.

"You mean, weirder than this nut job jumping off a bridge yelling out bomb threats?" Lt. Flynn was not in a good mood. Morales flashed him a curious glance before replying:

"You tell me." He paused briefly, before revealing: "He was dying already."

The doctor's pronouncement was followed by a few seconds of startled silence. Flynn frowned:

"He was sick?"

Morales gave a lopsided nod. "…only in the sense that his liver was dissolving." He held up a container with the organ in question for them to see: it looked bruised and shrunken in various places, and not at all like livers were supposed to look. "There are also signs of inflammation in his pancreas, partial necrosis of the tubular epithelium – that's his kidneys – and some damage to the heart tissue."

"What the hell kind of disease did all that?"

The doctor held up a finger. "Poison. Well – officially we're still waiting for tox screen to confirm," he amended. "Shouldn't be long… say the words 'toxin' and 'attack' over the phone and you tend to get moved to the head of the line. Lab results should be in shortly. They're testing for… hm, everything, I suppose." His eyebrows arched. "I for one never saw this before, so I have no idea what did it."

The Captain's eyes were still on the blackened liver. "Is it safe for you in there, Doctor?"

"I appreciate the concern, Captain," (he still managed to sound half-sarcastic, even though he probably meant it), "I'm fine." He tapped his breathing mask. "This filters out pretty much anything. And I didn't see significant damage to his airways or lungs so I doubt that whatever did this was airborne."

Flynn crossed his arms and glanced at Sharon. "So maybe there was something to this guy's lunatic raving after all. If someone went to the trouble to poison him with a deadly toxin…"

"…or it was an accidental poisoning," Morales piped in from behind the glass. "You might find this surprising given your line of work, but about ninety percent of all toxin-related deaths are actually unintentional. He could've accidentally come into contact with a poison, which could've led to an altered mind state and ended in him jumping off a bridge."

Raydor's eyebrows arched meaningfully at Flynn – that was also the possibility that she'd been considering – and the lieutenant gave a conceding nod:

"One can only hope."

* * *

Back in the murder room, Sharon considered the screen of her phone a little indecisively. It was almost ten a.m. now: Rusty was probably awake, and she'd promised to call him. Then again, maybe he was still sleeping… he didn't usually sleep that late, but it _was_ a Sunday after all, and they'd had a later night than planned, courtesy of a kitchen mishap and the subsequent cleaning efforts.

A sigh escaped her at the thought of those bits of dried-up dough that they'd had to scrape off all visible surfaces. Not to mention the half-destroyed electric socket, or the unplanned load in the washing machine... Rusty's clothes were still in the dryer (unless he'd remembered to take them out that morning, which was unlikely), Sharon needed a new hand-mixer, and they were out of eggs, milk, sugar and countertop cleaners.

All in all it had been a long night. If Rusty had wanted to sleep in, she couldn't blame him. She decided to shoot him a quick text instead of calling.

"Buzz and I finished processing the audio from the footage." Tao was holding up a USB drive, which he plugged into his computer. "It's still not too clear, but we'll be able to make out most of what this guy was saying, exactly."

"Good. With a little luck it'll all be the usual discourse… 'down with authority'…'the world just doesn't get it'…" Provenza rolled his eyes, "and we can send this one back downstairs and go home."

"Hopefully," said Tao. "Kathy and I were supposed to visit her brother's family today."

"I have tickets to a play at three," Buzz piped in.

Provenza gave them both a disapproving look. "Didn't anyone tell you that Sundays are for resting?"

"Maybe someone should forward that memo upstairs to the Chief's desk," Flynn scoffed, and everyone shot him slightly wary looks. Not that any of them were _happy_ at having been called in at unholy a.m. on a Sunday...

The buzzing phone drew her attention, and Sharon checked it to see a text from Rusty; it confirmed that he was indeed awake and asked if they were still on for lunch. Putting the phone back in her pocket for the moment, she turned to Tao. "Mike, play back the audio for us. Let's hear what our mystery victim –"

"He's not a victim," grumbled Flynn.

" – had to say before he jumped," Sharon finished, overlooking the interruption.

As everyone gathered around Tao's desk, he turned up the volume on his computer and started the sound file, playing it in parallel with one of the videos from the security camera footage. The picture quality was bad, but they could make out the silhouette of their jumper on the side of the bridge. His voice was a little distorted on the reconstructed audio file, but the words were clear enough:

_"…not the way to do it, man…who's gonna get it if we just blow everything up… this __– _the way to go _–_ make everyone listen… everyone, listen_‼_" The unexpected shout startled them, and on the video they saw the man stiffen, arms out as though making a speech to a crowd. "_Listen to me!_"

"The very picture of sanity," Provenza deadpanned, and Sharon shushed him so they could continue to hear the audio.

_" –doing it all wrong – not how it's supposed to be!"_ The static gave his words an eerie quality._ " –zero footprint – don't need another – for – crowd… don't you see? It's all social pressure… impulse-driven behavior… but take away the context, and you change the behavior! That's why…"_ He threw his hands up in an evocative gesture,_ " – up in flames! All of it! Context gone… the crowds, gone! And you people…_"

The speech degenerated into another few seconds of incoherent mumbling, that hadn't really been captured by the camera crew's microphones. The man continued to mutter the indecipherable words to himself or his phantom audience, until mid-sentence he stepped off the bridge as casually as though he were stepping off a curb.

Everyone in the room winced involuntarily at the unmistakable sound of his body thudding against the concrete.

Flynn shook his head and rolled his eyes again, muttering something that sounded a lot like 'waste of time'.

Sharon's lips pursed in displeasure. She didn't know what to do with this, the recording of the man's last words didn't clarify matters in the least. If anything, it made him seem _more_ deranged. Which left them right back where they'd started.

"I can try to work on the bits that are still unclear," Tao offered, "but we probably won't get much more than this. Camera crew was almost a hundred yards away, and their microphones aren't that sensitive. Plus they were talking over the guy, we had to filter out their voices."

She nodded in appreciation of his efforts, fully aware that even if they did get some more of the man's speech, it would probably be along the same lines and just as unhelpful. "Can we use all this video footage to get a better image of his face that we can run against the DMV database?"

"Buzz is working on that," said Tao.

Sharon glanced thoughtfully at the murder board, before turning to Provenza: "The guards at the storage facility, did we get their statements?"

The older lieutenant shook his head. "Patrol officers did. They'd already let the guards go home by the time we got to the scene. But I read over their statements…'didn't know the guy, didn't know what he was talking about'… in other words, nothing useful."

As he spoke, he handed Sharon a copy of the patrol officers' incident report, and she scanned it briefly, getting nothing out of it but a vague notion of familiarity when her eyes passed over the officers' names.

"Did they notice any suspicious activity in the last few days around the area? Could they have seen this man around before – maybe he lives nearby or the bridge is on his way to work…? There's a reason that he picked that location over another," she pointed out, "and it might help us figure out who he is." At the very least, they couldn't declare the case closed until they'd ID'ed the dead man.

Provenza nodded. "We'll ask the guards a few more questions." He walked to pick up the jacket from his chair. "Sykes, you're with me."

Sharon redirected her attention again. "Det. Sanchez, please see if Doctor Morales can give us a more precise age, so we can further narrow down the print search. Oh…and if the lab sends back the tox screen results, let me know immediately."

"Yes, Ma'am."

Sharon dipped her head in silent thanks, then turned to Andy: "Lt. Flynn – with me, please." She motioned them to her office. Provenza shot his partner a quick glance, to which he received only a sour mien in return… then Flynn started to follow the Captain to her office, and the rest of them all proceeded to their respective tasks.

* * *

"Andy, would you like to tell me what's bothering you?"

She'd closed the door to her office and walked to stand by her desk, eyeing his stormy look with a calm expression.

"You mean other than the fact that we got called in at four a.m. on a Sunday on a wild goose chase, so that Taylor can look good in front of the Mayor?"

Sharon waited in silence, and after a few seconds he let out a frustrated groan.

"It's just such a load of crap sometimes, you know? We're supposed to be bringing criminals to justice, not wasting time looking into some crackhead lunatic who hops off a bridge screaming nonsense!" He sounded almost accusatory.

She pondered her reply for a moment. "Doctor Morales says he was poisoned," she reminded him. "There might be more than a suicide to look into here."

"Yeah, well the Chief didn't know that when he assigned us the case," Andy retorted. "We're just … being used to fulfil someone else's agenda. To make it look like the LAPD is doing something, because some city council _asshole_ thinks that'll look good in the news!"

Sharon sighed. "Andy. Projecting an image of competence, a confident presence, has always been a part of the law enforcement process."

"Yeah? Maybe it shouldn't be." He wasn't in the mood to be reasonable.

"Maybe. Or maybe it's a necessary evil, in order to maintain the public trust that's so vital to us doing our jobs properly." Her small smile did nothing to assuage Flynn.

"You can phrase it so it sounds good," he shook his head, "but it doesn't change the fact that we work for politics just as much as for the public good. And that just pisses me off."

It was hard to argue more without feeling hypocritical, because just that morning on the phone with Provenza, Sharon had had more or less the same thought. "It's not something that we can change at the present moment," she told him instead, calmly. "So I'd rather do our jobs well, regardless."

"It's not our job to make Taylor look good with the Mayor."

That, she couldn't agree with. The fact that their efficiency made the Chiefs look good was one of the main reasons that the Major Crimes Division had survived a whole deluge of scandals and drama that would've gotten any other unit disbanded long ago.

"This is a waste of time, Sharon," Flynn continued resentfully, "and you know it too, so frankly I don't get why you're playing along, sending everyone out to do rookie work, instead of just … "He trailed off, his breath leaving him in a long sigh, and Sharon's eyebrows drew together in an almost sympathetic expression. As Andy had obviously just realized, there wasn't a whole lot that she _could_ do. Yes, she did have decision power as to which cases to take, on paper… but to just flatly refuse to investigate this one would've done more harm than good. When it came to navigating politics, she'd long learned to pick her battles.

More importantly, investigating some junkie's suicide might have been outside Major Crimes' purview and a poor use of resources, but …

"There's still a man down in our morgue whose family deserves to know what happened to him," she said quietly. "And we can't notify them until we figure out who he is."

Flynn let out another sigh, one hand going to the back of his neck. "I know," he acknowledged, the bitterness having left his tone. "You're right, I know. It's just…"

She crossed her arms, head tilting slightly to the right. "Why don't you tell me what's really bothering you?"


	3. Identity

**I scared everyone with that last chapter break! Don't worry, guys, our Lt. Flynn is safe for like, *at least* another eight chapters or so! **

**After that, all bets are off ;). **

**A Tangled Web (3)**

"I was supposed to have brunch with Nic and her family today." Flynn sighed, his previous anger gone. "Just a regular family brunch – my ex won't even be there, do you have any idea how long I've waited for something like that? Now because Taylor wants to make the Mayor happy, I'm gonna miss it." A trace of resentment found its way back into his voice.

Sharon's expression was sympathetic – and unsurprised. Lately, most of Andy's moods had been somehow connected to his efforts to make amends to his children. Addressing past mistakes was never easy. "You couldn't have known that we'd get called in," she offered.

"No, I know. It just… it makes me angry, you know?" He grimaced. "I used to pull this kind of thing all the time, letting her wait, missing school plays, birthdays – Nicole never says anything but I know she remembers that."

It was easy to feel for him. "I'm sorry."

"And it's not even – okay, if this were a real case, fine, but the only reason we're all here is because of some stupid meeting where the board of commissioners decided that the LAPD needs to be part of the Mayor's re-election campaign!"The lieutenant shook his head, disgusted. "I swear, I don't know how you play that game, Sharon. If I were in your place, I'd tell all those entitled assholes to go to hell."

Her lips curled ever so slightly. "Oh, I think they're all very well aware of your sentiments, even if you're not in my place," she assured him. "And I prefer a more… diplomatic route to telling one's _superior officers_ to go to hell."

At her deceptively mild smile, Andy snorted. "That must be why Pope picked you for the job and not me."

Sharon hummed. "No… he picked me because I'm scarier."

That surprised another snort out of Flynn. "No argument there," he smirked. Then after a second he sighed, the light humor gone again. "I haven't even called Nic to tell her I won't make it."

She let a few seconds pass by in thoughtful silence, then bit her lips. "Go to your brunch."

Andy's expression sobered instantly. "What – no, Sharon, that's not why –"

"I know," she acknowledged. "But we're not getting anywhere here until we get the tox screen results back, until Buzz is done reconstructing a better picture or Dr. Morales gets us some dental records or we get a hit on prints… none of which require your presence," she pointed out. "Go to brunch with Nicole and her family. We'll call you if we need you."

He shook his head, uneasy. "Look, everyone's got plans –"

" –and if we can spare _them_ later, I'll see what I can do about that, too," the Captain nodded. "For now, you're the one whose daughter and step-grandkids are waiting on him for brunch. So… go." Arching her eyebrows, she waved a hand in the direction of the door. "Go on. Give my best to them."

Flynn hesitated for another long moment, but in the end his shoulders relaxed, and he gave her a soft smile. "Sharon… thanks."

She smiled back. Then... "Well, I plan to make you write the after-action report on this case," she informed him, going around the desk to sit down, "so don't thank me yet."

* * *

As soon as Andy left, Sharon allowed herself a quiet moment, head leaning back against the chair. She thought that she'd done the right thing telling him to go… but the rest of them were still stuck there, and there really wasn't anything she could do to about _that_ until they ID'ed the man in the morgue.

She pulled out her phone to call Rusty, as she'd promised. Their plans for the day had to be altered, of course – they'd probably not get to go grocery shopping until the evening at the very best, and they'd likely have to skip going to mall to get him new pants for school… which was a problem because school was _tomorrow_ and his only other pair of appropriate uniform pants was in the hamper and… Well, they'd just have to run the washer again tonight, and of course not mention it to anyone at St. Joe's – or her mother – that they'd done laundry on a Sunday.

This last-minute scrambling to reconcile work and home and get everything done suddenly felt awfully familiar.

Raising her last two teenagers had entailed much of the same: the need to do several things at once, the worrying, the constant attempts to keep one step ahead of the game and on top of everything that was going on in their lives… With Rusty, there was _more_ on top of that, too, because there were _other_ dangers to him, and she'd already almost lost him once, and the security was gone now and oh… in a way, it had almost been easier when he was spending all his free time at the station.

Of course Sharon felt awful as soon as she thought that. His life wasn't lived for her convenience, and if she couldn't figure out a way to do her job _and_ take care of him and keep him safe, that was definitely her failing, not his.

She let out a long sigh as she listened to the phone dial.

Rusty picked up on the second ring, and asked her if they'd caught their bad guy yet. Despite her somewhat restless thoughts, Sharon smiled.

"Hi," she said, leaning back against the chair as he returned her greeting. "And no… actually, there might not be a bad guy to catch, this time."

"_Wow, I'm sure that's very disappointing._" Her smile widened; he was clearly in a good mood that morning.

"Did you eat breakfast?"

"_Yeah. We're out of bread, by the way,_" he informed her. "_And bacon_." (she rolled her eyes at the kind of 'breakfast' those ingredients hinted at.) "_And like… everything else. Do you want me to go grocery shopping?_"

Sharon winced. "That's alright, honey, we can go together, later tonight." The day she let him shop for groceries alone was the day they'd both start eating bread and bacon for every meal.

"_You could give me a list,_" Rusty grumbled, reading her mind, and for a moment she was worried that their easy mood would darken. But instead he just gave in and asked if they were still on for lunch, and she counted off yet another plan that had been derailed by the six a.m. work call.

This one, at least, was maybe still salvageable. "If you don't mind coming to the station a little later, and if we go someplace nearby," she said thoughtfully, glancing at the murder room and trying to infer how long it would take to ID their dead guy, "…I think that should work out just fine."

"_Yeah, okay,_" he agreed, then added a little worriedly: "_But like, as long as we don't have to go to that sandwich place again._"

'That sandwich place' was the nearest and most convenient food location, only a few minutes away from the police building. Their food was not at all objectionable, but there wasn't great variety as to what one could order, and it definitely got boring after a while. The first time that Rusty had been back at the station after the round-the-clock security had been lifted, he'd informed Sharon in no uncertain terms that he was never eating there again, if the alternative was starvation.

"No sandwiches," she promised with a smile. "We should have enough time to go to a nice sit-down place."

After all, the case was hardly a high-alert one. In fact, Sharon hoped that after the ID and the tox screen results came back, they could confidently establish that the man had no real grounds on which to make any threats to public safety, and that his death was definitely not a murder. And then – no matter what she'd told Lt. Flynn – she'd personally fax everyone's_ very costly_ overtime sheets to the Chief's home.

At the very least he could get an indigestion following his peaceful Sunday brunch.

* * *

Unfortunately, her optimism about a quick wrap-up may have been premature. By noon, there were still no hits on the prints, the guards that Provenza and Sykes had talked to had no further useful information to offer, and the photo that Buzz had reconstructed from the video footage was so far returning no matches in the DMV database.

"I suppose it's possible that he didn't have a driver's license…" Tao wore a doubtful expression, and the Captain shared his skepticism. The dead man had seemed older than sixteen, and Dr. Morales had put his age around early-to-mid-twenties. Her eyes narrowed as another idea occurred to her.

"Is there a way to compare the photo we have against high school graduates in the last… eight years?"

Tao grimaced. "Not an easy way, but yes. Usually I'd suggest sending his photo to local high schools – we have a listserv that includes most of them – but no one's going to see it on a Sunday afternoon… I'll check our photo databases and come up with a search algorithm."

Sharon thanked him. She felt bad making him do all the extra work, but, the sooner they ID'ed the man, the sooner they could all go home.

At his desk, Sanchez finished a phone call, then looked up. "Ma'am. That was Dr. Morales. The lab just sent back the preliminary tox screen results." He shook his head to preview the news. "Other than a slightly elevated blood alcohol level, none of the toxins they tested for showed up in our guy's bloodwork. That includes household and industrial poisons and a list of toxic agents commonly used in criminal acts..."

Sharon pursed her lips. That was not good news: in her experience, the harder it was to find anything, the more likely it was that there was something to be found.

Reluctantly, she began to re-evaluate the suicide angle. Sure, the man had jumped off the bridge on his own, that much was plain from all the video footage they had… but if he'd done it because he was under the influence of a toxin, and if coming into contact with that toxin _hadn't_ been an accident… then she might have been wrong when she'd told Rusty that there was no bad guy to catch.

Julio's expression indicated that he was thinking along the same lines. "The tox screen feels like a dead end, Ma'am." He arched his eyebrows. "I don't like dead ends."

Sharon dipped her head thoughtfully. "Neither do I, Detective," she murmured, then turned to glance again at what little information they had up on the murder board. Perhaps it was time to erase Lt. Provenza's quotation marks from around the word 'victim'. "I suppose we'll have to wait for more information on who this man is before we can tell the lab what else to test for…"

Of course, none of that meant that their John Doe's threats were any more believable. Quite the opposite: if he'd been out of it enough to jump off a bridge without really meaning to, Sharon was disinclined to care about anything that had come out of his mouth in the minutes prior to that.

That still left them with a possible murder.

And an unidentified toxin.

And an unidentified _dead body. _

At least he hadn't been delivered to her office in a duct-taped cooler...

* * *

"Captain…" Buzz walked into the murder room holding a couple of papers, and handed her one of them. "Printouts of our dead guy's picture. This is the best-resolution image that we can get from the video footage."

Sharon glanced down at the photo. It showed a young white male, with wavy brown hair down to his shoulders and a crooked nose. He looked very thin and otherwise perfectly ordinary, which made their inability to ID him all the more frustrating. It wasn't that someone was deliberately trying to hide this man's identity… it was just one of those needle in a haystack cases…

"Uh… should I…" Holding the second copy of the photo, Buzz waved uncertainly to the murder board. He wasn't usually the one to put stuff up there, but Tao was busy at his computer and Sanchez was seated and everyone else was gone…

When the Captain motioned him to go ahead, he hesitated a moment, a little confused as to where to place the picture exactly. Finally he pinned it next to the two grainy ones, more or less under the word 'Victim'.

"I've also looked at all the footage we have, again. Still no evidence of anyone else in any of the frames. Just… him. He was alone up there, Ma'am."

"Yes, thank you, Buzz," nodded Sharon. "At this point, there's no reason to think that this man didn't jump off the bridge of his own volition," she mused out loud, crossing her arms. "The question is, did he do so _intentionally_, or was it a consequence of an unidentified toxin impairing his judgment…?"

"Uh…" Buzz looked at her a little warily, as though uncertain whether she was actually _asking_ him and expecting an answer. "The…latter?" he guessed. "He did look pretty out of it in those videos."

Sharon hummed, thoughtful. "Unfortunately, until we ID him and find out more about his background, it's impossible to tell what he was like under normal circumstances."

"Could be that he was a wacko all the time," Sanchez translated for Buzz's benefit. "Although none of the shelters or psych wards in that area reported anyone missing," he told the Captain. "I checked earlier."

"That's because he wasn't homeless _or_ in a mental institution." Tao looked up from his computer, eyebrows arched in an expression that plainly said that he had news. "Just got a hit on the photo search."

Julio crossed his arms. "That was fast," he noted, a note of almost suspicious admiration in his tone, and the lieutenant gave his usual modest shrug:

"The algorithm was quicker than I thought."

Sharon's lips curled. If she had to be called out on a questionable case at the crack of dawn on a Sunday, having the best people on the force on her team at least gave her one reason to smile.

* * *

"James Donnell." Twenty minutes later, having waited for Provenza and Sykes to return, as well, Mike was writing the name of their victim above the photo on the murder board. "Twenty-three, works for the Animal Care Facilities at USC, has been employed there for the past two years. Not married, no history of mental problems, no criminal record… not even a speeding ticket. Although that might be because he doesn't actually have a car registered in his name," he amended.

"Let me guess," said Provenza, "no known affiliations with any radical groups or gangs, no documented anarchist leanings… no previous suspected involvement in any sort of criminal endeavor." His eyebrows arched wryly.

"None of the above," Tao confirmed.

"That doesn't mean that he's not involved in something now," Amy pointed out, earning herself an eye-roll from the older lieutenant:

"Do you _want_ to be here until tomorrow morning, Sykes?"

"If it means that a local train station doesn't get blown up," she replied in kind, although there was no more bite to her words than there had been to Provenza's protest, and he waved a dismissive hand:

"There's no indication that this guy even knew what a bomb looks like, let alone how to make one."

"I've also looked up his credit card statements," Tao provided. "No unusual purchases, nothing that stands out…"

"There you have it." Provenza leaned back in his chair. "I say we pass him on to Robbery-Homicide, with our compliments."

Five pairs of eyes moved to Sharon, who sighed quietly.

It was up to her, now, to decide how far to take the case. If she was comfortable calling it a suicide, she could send it back to the on-call officers and have them figure out emergency contacts and inform the family. That would let her division off the hook, but…

She glanced at the photo of the young man, then at the images of his damaged internal organs that Buzz had added to their documentation of the case.

If, as they all suspected, the 'suicide' had been a consequence of whatever toxin had poisoned Mr. James Donnell, she could still refer the case to Robbery-Homicide. It wasn't _un_likely that he'd come into contact with the toxin accidentally, as Dr. Morales himself had suggested...

With another sigh, she turned her attention to the team again. "Alright. Based on the evidence so far, I don't believe we can safely rule out the possibility that Mr. Donnell was murdered… or the possibility that he may have indeed been involved in some sort of threat to the public safety," she added almost reluctantly, to Provenza's resigned groan.

"Shoulda gone with Flynn," he mused. Sharon gave him a sympathetic look.

"As of this moment, I'm inclined to treat this as a suspicious death. We'll look into how James Donnell died, and hopefully the rest of the answers will come from there."

She took a step closer to the murder board, mentally reviewing the information that they had so far.

"Julio." The man nodded, at the ready. "You and Amy go check out his work place at USC. If no one's there on a Sunday, find out the name of his supervisor and go question them about Mr. Donnell. Lt. Tao… can you please look further into his background? Interests, friends, online activity… see if there's anything that might tell us why anyone would want to hurt him."

While Mike rolled his chair back to his desk and pulled his keyboard closer, Sharon turned to Provenza.

"Lieutenant… as soon as Lt. Flynn gets back, which should be any minute…" She paused, realizing that she'd been about to order him to the dead man's residence, except if there was any evidence there, they'd need to document it on film. And she'd _just_ allowed Buzz to go so he could make his play…

The day was getting more inconvenient by the minute. For everyone.

"Can someone please call Buzz, and let him know that we'll need him, after all?" she sighed. "Once he _and_ Lt. Flynn are back," she qualified, turning back to Provenza, "you can go check out Mr. Donnell's residence. Be careful what you touch – _something_ poisoned him, and it might not have been airborne according to Dr. Morales, but it could still be in his home."

"We'll make sure our gloves don't have any holes," the lieutenant reassured her with a wry smirk.

"Detectives, that goes for you, too." Sharon waited to see Sanchez nod, before glancing back at the murder board again.

His work and home covered, there was still one aspect to consider. "Since he's not married, who's James Donnell's next of kin?"

Sykes checked the basic background sheet that Tao had printed out for all of them. "Parents," she said. "Robert and Sylvia Donnell. They live in Arvin, Kern County... that's a few miles from Bakersfield."

A couple of hours' drive away. Too far for an in-person notification… usually. If they had to do it over the phone, Sharon would do it herself and spare anyone else the unpleasant experience. But depending on what they discovered in their investigation, it _might_ be worth it to drive over in person… She decided to postpone the notification until they had further information.

The sound of familiar footsteps made her turn her head, and she saw Rusty appear in the doorway to the murder room.

As soon as their eyes met, he read the note of apology in her smile, and sighed. "Let me guess. Rain check on lunch?"

Sharon grimaced. "I'm afraid so. I'm sorry, Rusty," she said softly, "I know I said that we should have time, but the case is turning out more… complicated, than I'd anticipated." She looked a little too anxious about his reaction, which made him give her a funny look.

"That's _okay_, Sharon… pretty sure murder trumps brunch."

"Hm." Provenza turned to the rest of them, his tone low, wry. "We should put that on a T-shirt."

* * *

**Complimentary 'Murder Trumps Brunch' T-shirts for everyone who reviews! ;)  
**

**(sadly, not really - although I would if I could!)**

**Thank you for reading! **


	4. Breakaway

**A Tangled Web (4)**

Rusty could hear Sharon's voice before he stepped into the murder room. With the rest of the floor empty and quiet, it echoed down the corridor, its familiar cadence filling him with the same vague sense of reassurance as always. Even after all this time it surprised him, a little, how she did that.

" – _careful what you touch, something poisoned him, and it might not have been airborne…_"

The things he heard in that murder room.

"_We'll make sure our gloves don't have any holes._"

Rusty smiled at that, Provenza's gravelly voice and his deadpan reply. Hearing Sharon tell them to be careful and hearing the lieutenant take it with his wry humor just felt wonderfully _normal_.

He missed that, a little bit.

Not that he never saw them anymore, or anything. He did. Kind of. Obviously he didn't go to the station every day after school anymore – and it was great that he didn't have to, and it's not like he _wanted_ to, but…a small part of him would have liked to be sure that it wasn't that _they_ didn't want him to.

But there was no way to ask, of course, so he mostly just tried not to think about it too much. Sharon had recommended that he come by one afternoon a week to get homework help from Buzz, and a couple of times he'd come by on Thursday, when school finished late because of chess club, and he and Sharon had left for dinner together… so yeah, he still got to say hi to everyone and see plenty of them and seriously, he did _not_ miss spending all his time in a police station…

…but…

Just a few days before he'd basically told Sharon outright that he didn't want to be there anymore.

He'd just been trying to deflect her attention, so she wouldn't find out about the fight at school – with everything else, the last thing he wanted was to give her _more_ reasons to be mad at him – but she'd caught him unprepared and before he knew it, the conversation had gone in a totally unintended direction and he was saying things he didn't really mean and she was taking it all _seriously_...

_… can you tell me if something happened at the station last time you were there? Did someone say anything to upset you?_

_No! No. It's just…I mean, everyone's great, but I don't need to like, hang around there and bother you guys anymore, you know?_

Which was... kind of true, but also not quite. But then Sharon hadn't hurried to contradict him, either ('I don't think anyone thinks of you as a bother, Rusty, they've all grown accustomed to you being around' totally did not count, because 'grown accustomed', really?), and she didn't seem mad about him not hanging out at the station anymore, so maybe it _was_ what she wanted...?

He stopped in the doorway to the murder room, not wanting to interrupt, but Sharon was already glancing over. Rusty figured that she'd probably heard him, the same way he'd heard her. When their eyes met she smiled, and he couldn't see any of the unease that he'd been noticing when she looked at him sometimes, lately. The very thought of it rippled uncomfortably through his chest; he was glad of its absence now.

There _was_ a tell-tale crease to her brow, though, and this half-apologetic look in her eyes, and given the way that everyone looked poised to jump into action, Rusty could easily guess what was coming: "…rain check on lunch?"

Sharon looked _so anxious_ as she confirmed it, and what did she expect him to do, exactly, flip out because she had to solve someone's murder instead of taking him out for waffles?

* * *

Maybe she did expect something like that.

Sharon was so… wary, lately.

Mostly he tried to ignore it, but sometimes it just _got_ to him... It was as though she didn't think that she could look away for one second anymore, without him getting into trouble. It had taken her two weeks after he'd gone back to school to even consider letting him drive himself there, and then only after a few tense driving lessons in which he'd had to treat the Volvo as though it were loaded with TNT and would go up in flames at the smallest jolt.

At the end of their last driving lesson he'd had enough of the 'break more gradually!'s and the 'check your side mirrors when you change lanes!' and you know what, he could take the bus to school if she was _that _terrified about denting the car – and she'd said something about immature behavior, and he'd said something about how maybe her problem was with him and not his driving and... well, at the end of the day Sharon had handed over the keys and he'd made her dinner to apologize.

The next morning she'd asked him to text her when he got to school, and so he'd done it every day since, voluntarily. He did it when he got back home, too. Seven-forty-five a.m. and three p.m., he texted Sharon to let her know that he'd managed to drive the half hour between their condo and Saint Joseph's without incident. Every day, even though it was the most ridiculous thing in the world.

She still seemed uneasy, in a hundred different ways.

Each time they parted ways in the garage in the mornings she said 'Be careful'. He didn't think that she even realized it anymore but every. single. time. And okay, he wasn't the greatest driver and he'd done some pretty stupid things, he knew, and… he understood, but it still felt awful that Sharon didn't trust him anymore.

If he could've, he would've taken back what he'd said to her that day after the testimony. If it meant that he wouldn't see those anxious looks that she gave him sometimes, or the way she hesitated when she left him on his own.

Rusty knew that Sharon loved him. She'd told him so a few times, and he believed her, but he also knew that he was making it _hard_ for her to love him, and maybe one day she'd just… get tired. How much more could he dump in her lap, really, before it became _too_ much?

He wished that he didn't have to carry all that with him. He wished that he didn't have to bring it all into her life. It was who he was, and no matter how hard he tried, there always seemed to be just… more. Why couldn't he just be happy, when the damn testimony was over, and go back home and get his life back and carry on and not … not… _think_ about things so much? It might have all been easier, then.

But now…

"Rusty…"

The sound of his name broke into his thoughts, and he pushed back everything else and refocused on what Sharon was saying. He was pretty sure she'd just apologized for the lunch thing again.

Like that was even a real problem. 'Yes, Sharon, you broke down a door to stop a psycho from stabbing me, I'm real angry that you can't go out to lunch today.'

Honestly.

So he said, _again_, that it was fine, and really, he hadn't exactly been starving for three days, he could wait. If she thought she could go later. Or he could go get take-out for both of them. Or…whatever.

" –don't think that I'll be able leave any time soon, I need to be available in case we get any new developments. " She paused just long enough to acknowledge Sanchez and Sykes leaving, then smiled at him again. "So it's looking as though I'm here for the day."

"Okay, I'll just go get some take-out, then. Uh…what's that place called, again? Mario's?" That was a bistro just a short drive away. Or a twenty minute walk, if he cut through the park. Sharon had introduced him to it, and anything was better than those sandwiches next door… "You like their stuff, right?"

"Rusty, you don't have to –"

He rolled his eyes. "It's no big deal, Sharon. Besides, don't you have to eat at some point, anyway? Do you _really_ prefer that sandwich place?" His eyebrows arched pointedly.

It was easy to tell that she was giving in, from the way her lips pressed into a poorly-suppressed grin. "I see nothing wrong with their sandwiches," she countered. "And I seem to recall someone being quite enthusiastic about their root beer floats."

Yeah, when there were like, no other options. "Yeah, well, just FYI, they never have fresh salad on Sundays."

Sharon hummed gravely. "You make a compelling argument." Her head tilted a little to the right, and she nodded. "Alright, then."

"I'll have the shaved pork, side of coleslaw," Provenza called from his desk, without even looking up from the file he was reading. Rusty gave him a slightly startled look, then glanced at Sharon, who was again failing to suppress a smile.

"Uh… okay…?"

Lt. Tao paused his typing to look over. "Do they have any kind of pasta? Like Primavera, maybe?

Just for the record, Sharon looked entirely too amused.

* * *

Provenza followed Rusty with an inconspicuous look as the boy walked out of the murder room. When the echo of his footsteps had faded, the lieutenant looked up at Raydor instead. His eyebrows wriggled fractionally, a silent comment on the kid's willingness to do a food run for all of them (well – willingness to do it for _her_, minimal protesting at the rest). In return, the Captain smiled a little, her eyes softening the way they often did when Rusty was involved, and she dipped her head in acknowledgment of Provenza's point.

Things were good, then... right?

It was a little hard to tell, lately, now that the kid wasn't spending all his time at the station (not that Provenza was_ unhappy_ with that, mind you, babysitting wasn't on his list of hobbies anyway). Sometimes it seemed that all was well… other times Raydor came in to work with telling dark circles under her eyes, and if Rusty happened to drop by the same day, there were subtle wary looks and uncomfortable silences between them… And then there was all the texting, which definitely hadn't been a thing before the whole SIS operation debacle…

_That_ hadn't been one of his brighter ideas, in hindsight Provenza was ready to admit so.

He should've known, really, when Taylor had started agreeing with him. When on Earth did that ever herald anything good?

But either way the whole mess was over. _Really_ over – he had a two-pound pile of FID paperwork to prove it – and maybe all was not smooth sailing for the kid and the Captain, but hey, anything was better than virtual house arrest and a psycho killer out there threatening them.

Right...?

In any event, whatever was going on between those two was none of his business. The team's case and his job had ended around the same time as Weller's brain activity, and Raydor was obviously trying to put some distance between the kid and the murder room, and rightly so! Provenza for one was glad to have the place stop feeling like an after-school program.

And if she was having trouble with the boy, she could always _ask_… What was she expecting him to do, ply her for information? Because let's make one thing clear, Louie Provenza did not do the whole mother hen thing.

"So … all quiet on the western front, then…?"

Damn it.

Oh, and he nodded at the door that the kid had just walked through, too, in case she didn't get his meaning.

A couple of slow, thoughtful nods were Raydor's reply. "Rusty seems to be enjoying being more independent again."

Unlike his expression of mild disinterest, the lieutenant's snort was entirely genuine. "Show me a teenager who _doesn't_ enjoy that. Strangely enough," he smirked, "their idea of independence somehow doesn't preclude someone else in the background feeding them and paying the bills."

The Captain hummed noncommittally.

A little _too_ noncommittally. Provenza gave her a knowing look. It didn't take a genius to figure out that she wasn't enjoying Rusty's independence nearly as much as the kid was.

Her ringing phone drew both their attention, and he watched her features slip into a business-like expression as she picked up. "Yes, Detective…"

* * *

Sharon sighed as she replaced the phone in her pocket.

As foreseen, the USC Animal Care Facilities office was closed, so Sanchez and Sykes were headed to the home of its director, who would hopefully be able to answer some questions about James Donnell. The two detectives had also run a quick check through the university's Department of Public Safety, and had found no reports on Donnell; the man seemed more average and innocuous by the minute, and their case was going nowhere fast. It still wasn't clear that they even _had_ a case…

…Although, it wasn't often that the ME couldn't confidently rule if a death had been a suicide, an accident or a murder.

By virtue of that alone, maybe they did have a case after all.

They definitely had a long day ahead of them.

The clock on the wall showed one-twenty. At least Lt. Flynn should be back any minute, and he and Provenza could go check out the dead man's residence, and get some insight into what Mr. Donnell had been up to in the days before his convoluted death.

One-twenty…her mind automatically calculated how long it would take for Rusty to drive to Mario's and back. It shouldn't have been that long... unless he'd walked...

Even as she began to force her thoughts away from that (there was 'following your instincts', and then there was 'overreacting', and Sharon was still perfectly capable of recognizing one from the other), a sudden association formed at the back of her mind. Speaking of walking...

"Mike." The lieutenant looked up. "You said Mr. Donnell didn't own a car. Did he live on or near campus?"

He glanced at the information on his screen. "Uh, no – the address listed here is off Wilshire Boulevard, near Koreatown. That's maybe … five miles away from USC? Six?"

"That's too long to walk… so how did he get to work every day? Is there an easy bus route?"

Tao was already checking. "No, he'd have to change two buses… but," he said after a few seconds of studying his screen, "he's got a bike registered through the USC… a lot of universities have this system," he added, "that allows students and staff to register their bikes with campus security, in case they get stolen. James Donnell registered … three years ago, when he first started to work there. And it looks like he's renewed it every year since."

Sharon let out a disappointed sigh. "So he biked to work." She'd been hoping for a carpool buddy that could tell them more.

"_Biked_ across Wilshire and Central LA at rush hour?" Provenza rolled his eyes. "Perhaps we should rethink the 'death wish' angle here..."

Tao shrugged. "They've been adding more bike paths…" he said halfheartedly.

Sharon ignored the exchange, her focused frown returning. "Was there a bike found at the scene?"

This time, it was Provenza who checked the file on his desk. "There doesn't seem to be anything in the patrol officers' report about that." He paused for a moment, then added: "Never thought I'd say this, but maybe we should start teaching these kids how to write proper incident reports, at the academy."

Again Sharon ignored the wry comment. "Did they even check for a bike or a parked car? Which side of the bridge had he come from? And," her frown deepened, "since now we know that Mr. Donnell wasn't homeless, why _didn't_ he have a wallet or ID on him? Did the responding officers check the surroundings for anyone who might've taken it?"

"One would certainly hope that they did…" the lieutenant murmured as he continued to browse the report, "…but, nothing on that in here, either. Well, they did get this call just before the end of their shift," he admitted with a lopsided nod, "and they were stuck there for an extra couple of hours until Taylor called _us_ in... I guess they weren't feeling particularly generous with their time."

"I'm not feeling particularly generous with mine," Sharon retorted dryly, her lips pursing in displeasure. "Lieutenant, will you call the two patrol officers in to give us an _actual,_ proper report?"

"At lunch time on a Sunday?" He sounded doubtful.

"They'll be off duty by now," Tao also warned from his desk.

The Captain's eyes narrowed. "At this point, I have no idea what exactly they found at the scene. And since I'm spending _my_ Sunday here, I'd rather not waste time trying to redo someone else's work." She crossed her arms. "If they couldn't be bothered to fill out a proper report, they're just going to have to come in and do it in person."

The two men exchanged a look; Tao shrugged, glad that at least he wasn't the one who had to make the call. With a sigh, Provenza reached for the phone on his desk.

"I'll be hearing from the union about this…"

"If you do, feel free to direct their protests to Chief Taylor," Sharon recommended dryly.

* * *

The next fifteen minutes served only to further establish just how little information they had to go on, and add to Sharon's growing sense of frustration. Between the obviously unassisted (but maybe unintentional?) leap from the bridge, the unknown toxin, the off-the-wall threats and James Donnell's currently unremarkable history, the case was a veritable headache.

"- kind of kid these days doesn't have a Facebook account? Even my grandkids have them."

"Actually a lot of young people prefer Twitter or other social networks," Tao provided for Provenza's benefit. "But I can't tell much about Donnell's online presence without knowing his handle... uh, username. If I had his laptop, I'd know a lot more."

"We'll be sure to bring you the laptop, special delivery," Provenza deadpanned, then he craned his neck to glance at the clock. "As soon as I get _my_ delivery. No offense, Captain," he smirked, "but next time you should pick a favorite restaurant that's closer."

Her response was a tight smile: "I'm sure your lunch will be here soon, Lieutenant," she murmured.

"Mario's _is_ close," mentioned Tao. "Rusty must've gone through the park instead of driving."

Sharon had to willfully suppress a twinge of concern.

There was no reason to be concerned anymore if he decided to take a walk through the park, but after months of constant worrying, the habit was hard to shake. Even now, six weeks later, she still felt residual panic at times. She'd get distracted or wrapped up in thought and _forget_ that the danger was over… then her gaze would idly wander over to the desk where he used to sit, and when she didn't see him there her heart would abruptly start pounding, until her conscious mind caught up and she remembered that everything was fine.

Or at least, that he was safe.

It was something she needed to remind herself too often. And though she tried to prevent it, part of that was tainting Rusty's return to a normal life, and she felt that maybe he resented her for it, a little. He was definitely pulling away from her, and with his eighteenth birthday less than two months away...

"Captain?" Tao's voice pulled her out of her thoughts. When she looked up, the lieutenant was waving her over to his computer. "You may want to see this."

Both she and Provenza made their way to his desk, and Mike turned the screen around.

"I think I know what Donnell was talking about before he jumped."

* * *

**Thank you for reading! Hope everyone has a great weekend. **


	5. Footprint

**You guys wanted Lt. Flynn back, and some answers from Tao ... ;) **

**A Tangled Web (5)**

A website with loud colors and pixelated animations flashed at them on Lt. Tao's computer screen; Sharon grimaced at the jarring effect.

"Zero Footprint…" she read the page title, and frowned. "Donnell referred to that, on the video."

The lieutenant nodded. "I looked it up the first time, but this site was too low on the hit list and there wasn't anything to connect it to our victim… since we didn't know anything about Mr. Donnell this morning. But after I added his name to the search, this suddenly jumped out."

"I'm assuming that _annoyingly cryptic_ name stands for something..." Provenza glared at the flashy screen, which was about to give him a migraine. "Because last time I checked, 'zero' wasn't a real foot size. Unless our man was secretly a _Lilliputian_..." he rolled his eyes, earning himself a look from both the Captain and Tao.

"Uh, no," Mike cleared his throat. "The 'footprint' part refers to the ecological footprint, which is essentially a way to measure the effect of human demands on natural ecosystems. Like the carbon footprint, for instance, which measures how much carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere by human activities."

The look on Provenza's face was a story onto itself. "He jumped off a bridge because of _carbon emissions_?"

"Er – probably not," replied Tao. "But he did found this website as a forum to explain to people how to make less of an ecological impact on the planet. Live alongside nature and all that. There are dozens of blog entries detailing how to change one's habits to lead a cleaner… greener… life."

"And yet he lived in LA," Provenza said dryly. "Not that I don't love our fair city," (his eyebrows arched derisively,) "but it's not exactly a green eco-friendly haven."

"Donnell seemed to agree with you," nodded the younger lieutenant. "Most of his entries are precisely on how people in LA should do things differently. There are several diatribes on what the city council is doing wrong, too… a few condemnations of the new landscaping laws… but, here, these are the ones you might find interesting." He pulled up a handful of pages, cascading them on the screen. "He talks about the city's traffic problems, the water shortage, the commercial areas taking over residential neighborhoods... and here, you can see some phrases that sound familiar."

He pressed a few keys, and red rectangles highlighted strings of words here and there on the open pages. Sharon's brow creased.

"Social pressure, impulse-driven behavior, context shift – these are all things he talked about right before he jumped."

Tao nodded again. "They're part of his argument that a lot of our city's resource problems come from people being stuck in a vicious cycle of destructive behaviors... and that social measures and impulse control would basically help everyone break free from that cycle and start improving their footprint. Saving energy, reducing emissions, being more socially conscious... it's a pretty well-written argument, actually." He shrugged at Provenza's dry look. "It is."

"Don't tell me you _agree_ with him now," the white-haired lieutenant groaned.

"No, but he does raise some interesting points, and he seems to have a decent grasp of crowd psychology and collective behavior... anyway," he hurried to say at Provenza's exasperated look, "this is probably what he was talking about on the bridge."

"It certainly seems that way." Sharon had finished skimming the pages on the screen. "Do any of his posts recommend _blowing up public sites_ as a way to reduce the city's 'footprint'?"

"I haven't read them all," said Tao, "but from a basic keyword search, it doesn't seem like it. The overall tone is more persuasive than preachy or angry. There are no mentions of meetings or offensive measures, and definitely nothing as extreme as bomb threats... 'Zero Footprint' seems to be just an opinion blog, mostly."

She let out a slow breath, frowning still. "Then why," she murmured, "would he mention the bomb threats in the first place...?"

"Because he was drunk, and his brain was all scrambled," sighed Provenza. Noticing her expression, he shook his head: "You're not thinking that there's something to his ranting...?"

Sharon crossed her arms, glancing back at the murder board. "What I'm thinking, Lieutenant, is that six hours ago this was an intoxicated suicidal madman who'd jumped off a bridge shouting nonsense... and now he's a young man with a steady job, no history of drugs or mental problems, and a website that puts his 'ranting' into worrisome perspective." She arched her eyebrows. "I'm thinking that I want to know more about what Mr. Donnell was up to in his spare time... and I _really_ want to know what toxin 'scrambled his brain'...and how he came into contact with it."

* * *

When Buzz entered the squad room a couple of minutes later, it was easy to tell from his slumped shoulders and bleak expression that he was not thrilled to be back. He glanced at the rest of them, and sighed as he greeted: "Captain…"

She gave him a sympathetic expression, while Provenza looked up from his desk.

"Don't look so glum, Buzz. Sure, you're missing your play," he held out both hands in a coaxing gesture, "but you get to spend the afternoon with Flynn and me, looking for vital evidence that Captain Planet here wasn't a radical eco nut."

That somehow lacked the persuasive power that the lieutenant may have intended; Buzz's face only grew more doubtful.

"I think I preferred the theater…"

Tao glanced over his shoulder. "Well, with Flynn and Provenza, you're probably gonna get a show, too."

Sharon pressed her lips together to contain a completely unbefitting smirk.

"Very funny, Tao," Provenza gave him a dry look. "Very funny."

"Just trying to make him feel better about missing his play... What were you going to see, anyway?"

"Twelfth Night, the musical. It's a big thing on Broadway apparently," Buzz expounded, "my cousin's school is putting up a local production. They're supposed to be pretty good… at least according to my aunt."

"Twelfth Night, _the musical_?" Provenza's disbelieving voice was accompanied by an eye roll. "The things they come up with... Shakespeare's probably rolling in his grave."

"Not according to the promotional posters," said Buzz. "It's supposed to be 'the way he meant it'."

That only earned him another eye roll. "You're better off with me and Flynn."

Since he couldn't agree, the blond just sighed. "I'll go get my camera ready…"

"Thank you, Buzz." Sharon nodded as he headed toward Electronics, then turned to Tao. "Is there any indication that James Donnell was living with someone? Roommates, a romantic partner? Anyone who would share his interests?"

"Nothing in the bills associated with his address, and there's no one else listed living there. On paper, he was living alone." The lieutenant shrugged. "Actually, there isn't much of a paper trail to look into. He has one bank account, one credit card – which he hasn't used since 2009 – pays his bills on time… no suspicious activity," he concluded, and one of Sharon's eyebrows lifted slightly.

"His sudden death is suspicious activity," she murmured, half to herself. "Let's see if we can find evidence in Mr. Donnell's home about anyone close to him who might know more about his life," she told Provenza. "Unlikely as it is, if he _was _planning any sort of environmental strike, he probably wasn't in it alone."

He dipped his head in acknowledgment of her point, but still hummed doubtfully. "This guy biked six miles to work and told people to plant more trees and take shorter showers. I'll be very surprised if he turns out to be the type to blow up train stations." He raised both eyebrows in a knowing expression. "I predict that his criminal activities might lean more toward the regulated substance abuse end of the spectrum... I'll bet we find that he liked _gardening_..."

It was a bad sign when Sharon found herself feeling more cynical than Provenza. "Let's keep an open mind anyway," she suggested. "And Lieutenant… as you search the house, please remember to keep an eye out for that toxin."

"Don't worry, Captain," he joked, "I'll get Flynn and Buzz back to you with their livers intact."

Despite the flippant response to her warning, she knew that once they got to the man's home, he'd be careful enough. He hadn't made it four decades on the force without knowing how to safely work a scene.

Familiar footsteps reached them from the corridor once more, and Sharon let out an imperceptible sigh of relief. Her eyes flickered to the clock one last time, as she felt her shoulders relax involuntarily.

* * *

Rusty walked in carrying a coffee cup in one hand, a large plastic bag in the other, and a smaller paper bag in the crook of his elbow. Making a beeline for Sharon, he offered her the paper bag, then started to take the plastic one over to Provenza's desk; the lieutenant immediately waved a hand.

"Unpack it on Flynn's desk."

With an almost-suppressed eye roll, the boy deposited the larger take-out bag on Lt. Flynn's desk, and proceeded to pull out a white plastic container, then a smaller round one, and finally a cup of iced tea. He wordlessly handed everything over to Provenza.

"Thank you." The lieutenant smirked. "I hope the mayo is low-fat."

Rusty sighed. "You owe Sharon $14.50," he replied.

Provenza arched amused eyebrows at the Captain. "Any interest in printing credit?" He reached for his wallet as he said it, but she waved him off.

Meanwhile, Rusty was unpacking another take-out container, along with a smaller paper bag that seemed to contain two breadsticks, and a cup of coffee. He walked them over to Tao, who also thanked him and in return was also promptly informed of the amount of money he owed Sharon. In the middle of the proceedings, Lt. Flynn also walked in, back from brunch and carrying a small bag of his own.

The lieutenant swept a quick gaze over the room, quickly reading the situation. "Huh, looks like I missed the delivery."

Rusty shot him an wry glare.

"Didn't this come with one of those little salad containers?" Provenza demanded.

With another sigh, the boy deigned to glance into the take-out bag once more, and sure enough, underneath a pile of napkins, he'd overlooked a small round plastic bowl. He handed it over to Provenza, just as Tao turned in his chair.

"Er… I think this comes with salad, too."

Rusty crossed his arms. "_Seriously_?"

With a disgruntled huff, he pulled everything out of the bag, dumping the napkins all over Flynn's desk (too amused at the entire scene, the lieutenant didn't bother with more than a half-hearted protest). Finally, Rusty found Lt. Tao's salad container, as well as a couple of spice bags which he distributed with a sour mien. "I feel like Buzz," he complained.

"Excuse me, I'm the civilian surveillance expert, not the delivery boy." Camera in hand, Buzz stopped in the doorway and glanced at all the take-out. "And how come I didn't get any food?"

Rusty rolled his eyes. "Seriously? You weren't even here!"

Buzz just pursed his lips in obvious disapproval of the argument. "Figures. Remember _this_ next time you need algebra help."

"I don't _need_ algebra help…" the boy grumbled, and the two of them made disgruntled faces at each other.

* * *

Provenza took another bite of his sandwich, glad of the two minutes of relative quiet he could enjoy before they all had to go back to their tasks. Buzz and Rusty had taken their bickering to Electronics, and Tao was too busy trying to eat with one hand and type with the other. Provenza shook his head at that – overachiever.

" – and then the kids said that they like _me_ better than the other guy 'cause I actually ate their banana marshmallow chocolate chip muffins…"

He gave his chattering partner an oblique look. "Who the hell actually eats that, Flynn?"

"Hey, they weren't bad. They had walnuts, too. And sprinkles."

The older lieutenant shook his head; but then, he wasn't one to judge. He'd eaten plenty of his own grandkids' concoctions, a lot of them much worse than overloaded muffins. And Flynn may have had a strong allergy to the word 'grandfather', but he was acting just like one.

"Where's the Captain?" Andy looked around the murder room, as if surprised that she'd suddenly vanished while he was filling in his partner on the brunch story.

"On the phone with Sykes, getting updates." Provenza was suddenly suspicious. "Why?"

"Well…Nicole asked me to say hi, give Sharon her best. Kids, too."

The other man let out a muted groan, and resolutely directed all his attention back to the sandwich.

"And…"

Oh god, there was an 'and'.

Flynn at least has the decency to look a little uncomfortable. "Well…the kids kinda wanted to send her their muffins so she could try them. Do you think she'll be offended if…"

The groan was louder this time. "Flynn!"

"What?"

"Give me those muffins," Provenza growled.

"They're not _for_ you."

His partner glared. "Give them."

Rolling his eyes, Andy pulled a box out of the bag he'd brought in, but didn't hand it over. "Look, the boys wanted this to go to Sharon, not you. Besides, you just said you wouldn't eat these…!"

The older lieutenant was staring silently at the box. "Is that a _ribbon_?"

"Wha – oh. Yeah, they wanted it to look nice. I suggested that color, the Captain seems to like it."

Provenza gritted his teeth.

"So anyway…you don't think she'll mind if I give this to her, right?"

His partner's response was a long, thoughtful hum.

"Let's tell the Captain that before we go to the man's residence, we'll go check the bridge again," Provenza suggested.

"Oh. Okay…why?"

"So I can follow Donnell's example," his conversational tone segued into a dry glare, "and _jump off_."

* * *

Sharon cradled the phone to her ear as she walked back into the squad room, her hands busy with her salad plate and two sets of utensils (Mario's had apparently decided to no longer include those unless one specifically asked for them – which Rusty had not.)

"Thank you, Detective. Yes. I'll let you know."

Wrapping up the conversation with Sykes, she balanced the plate and utensils in one hand so she could put the phone back in her pocket. The three lieutenants were looking at her expectantly, and she shook her head as she began to relate Amy's updates:

"The Animal Care director barely knew James Donnell. No complaints about him as an employee, but she didn't have any information about his friends or his activities." The bad news out of the way, she moved on to the progress: "She did, however, mention that he…"

The sound of unfamiliar footsteps interrupted her, and Sharon turned around to see who had entered the murder room now. Briefly, she looked confused, needing a moment to place the face. Then her eyebrows arched.

"Officer…Cooper." It took her a second to retrieve the name, too. "What are you doing here? I thought you – oh." Suddenly she realized why the names on the earlier incident report had sounded so familiar. "You were one of the responding officers on the scene."

The young man nodded, his too-long bangs falling over his eyes as he did so. "Yes, Ma'am. Halfway through my mandatory six months of patrol." He managed to suppress a pout, but still a small grimace fleeted across his face. "Officer Ramirez and I were told you needed more information, so I'm here to help in any way I can. What do you need?"

Sharon paused for a moment; she'd forgotten about his eagerness.

"Yes… Lt. Flynn can take your statement, as soon we're done here. Lieutenant… would you please…?"

Andy walked away from Provenza's desk. "Yes, Captain. This way," he grabbed a notepad from his own desk, then motioned the former undercover 'buy guy' over to an unoccupied workspace in the far corner.

Sharon sighed. She waited a few more seconds, so that Flynn could settle their visitor and maybe listen in to the rest of her update. From his seat, Provenza gave her a long-suffering look:

"Don't they grow younger every year?"

She sighed again, then resumed: "Donnell's boss mentioned that he worked the weekend Animal Care shift. Because of the day/night cycle of most of the lab animals, they need to have their food and water changed between the hours of eight and eleven p.m.."

"So he'd have been at work right before jumping off the bridge," Tao concluded, and Sharon gave a slow nod.

"Julio and Amy are on their way back to USC to check the logs, see if he signed in last night and what time. If he did, we might be able to get a better timeline and narrow down who the last people were to see him alive."

"Most animal research facilities also have security cameras," Mike put in. "If they do, and Donnell was there last night, we should get them to send over the footage."

"_Hey_." In the corner, Andy tapped his hand to the table to get Officer Cooper's attention. "Eyes on that statement, kid. I don't have all day."

"Right." The young man pulled his attention away from the discussion, and looked back at the notepad in front of him. "No problem. So… what do you need to know?"

"How about everything you didn't bother to put in the incident report?" Flynn waved the flimsy paper that comprised the patrol officers' official account. "Starting with what exactly you found at the scene, and where. In _detail_," he added pointedly.

Cooper sighed, doing his best to school his lack of enthusiasm at the task; it took all of ten seconds for his attention to drift back to the Captain's discussion, and at the sound of a knock on the door, he stopped pretending altogether and looked up with renewed interest.

Andy rolled his eyes, and snapped his fingers, pointing again to the notepad with a no-nonsense look.

* * *

Dr. Morales was the only one who ever knocked on the murder room door. It wasn't a real knock, more of a light rap against the doorframe to announce his presence, and really he only came upstairs about once a century, so it's not like it mattered…but when he did venture onto their turf, he knocked.

Considering how many people saw her murder room as an extension of the corridor and barged in uninvited at all hours, Sharon appreciated the friendly formality.

He help up a thin file as he walked in. "I brought you a copy of the dental records… they're not the greatest, but…"

"Thank you, Doctor." Sharon smiled a little apologetically as she took he file. "We actually ID'ed our man a short while ago."

"Oh – well, it'd have been nice if someone had told me," Morales said wryly, "but, that means I'm free to go, so I'm happy. Or… as happy as I can be, having started the day analyzing bits of smashed body parts."

Turned around in his chair, Flynn snorted. "That's how you start every day," he pointed out.

"Not my days off." The doctor arched his eyebrows. "At least I didn't use to, until Major Crimes was formed," he amended. "Calling me in on Sundays seems to have become a bad habit for you people."

"When we figure out a way to schedule murders, we'll let you know," Provenza promised.

"Only if you figure it out between nine and five on a workday, please," replied Morales, and he and the Captain exchanged a vaguely amused look. "Well, I'm off to get a very late batch of lunch Margaritas… please don't call me back."

"Doctor –" Sharon suppressed a smile at his exasperated expression. "Did you find anything else that could tell us what toxin poisoned Mr. Donnell?"

He shook his head. "No. And if the lab couldn't figure it out from hours of working on his blood and tissue, I doubt I'm your best chance, honestly." His shoulders rose in a small shrug. "Like I said, I'm not an expert in poisons. I can recognize the symptoms and traces, I can't sniff out the chemical composition. If you find any candidates, I'm happy to test them for you… tomorrow."

The Captain nodded, a silent acknowledgment that they'd abused his time enough. "Thank you for your help, Doctor. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon," she wished him.

"I plan to, thank you. Ta –" He paused mid-goodbye, and frowned at the murder board. "This guy worked in an animal lab?"

"USC Animal Care Facility," Sharon confirmed. "Detectives Sanchez and Sykes are on their way there now."

Morales sighed. "Okay, I'm gonna say this, and please don't take it as an invitation to make me stay here any longer… but if _I_ were looking for your mystery toxin, I'd start by asking if they have any exotic poisonous animals in those facilities."

* * *

**...how am I doing with that 'between the lines' thing ;)?  
**

**Thanks everyone for reading!**


	6. Intoxicating

**Thanks to everyone reading and reviewing this. **

**A Tangled Web (6)**

Det. Sykes let out a soft groan as they crossed a narrow campus walkway toward a tall, glass-walled building. Noticing the sideways glance from Sanchez, she shrugged.

"This is the third building we've had to check. I'm just thinking it'd be so much easier if they just had the animal labs all in one building. You know?"

"Different departments, different labs," the Public Safety officer with them led the way up the entrance staircase. "Different buildings." He swiped his ID card to open the front doors. "This is the last one, though. Molecular Biology, Bio-Chemistry and Genetics are all in here. Do you have the room numbers you want?"

Sanchez held up the list they'd gotten from the Animal Care director; a printed page with all the animal labs that James Donnell had had to take care of. After a quick glance at the paper, the Public Safety officer led them to the nearest one. With another card swipe, a metal door hissed open into a cream-walled corridor; Amy scrunched up her nose at the by-now-familiar rodent smell.

Next to her, Sanchez smirked knowingly, and she shot him a dry glance as they walked up to the mouse colony room.

"Don't even get me started on how they should have some kind of electronic sign-in system." She stopped in front of a door that read A331, the first number on their list. A hand-written sign-in sheet was stuck to the door with a magnet, which prompted Sykes to shake her head again. "Seriously. How is _this_ the way they keep track of anything in a top research facility?"

With a silent shrug, Julio read the sheet. "There it is." He tapped a finger to the last filled out line. "J.D., nine forty-one p.m. last night. Food and water boxes are checked. Donnell was here, too."

Amy checked their notes. "That's the latest timestamp so far. He signed in to the last Neuroscience lab at… nine-sixteen. Psychology at eight forty-eight. Oh, and there's that bat room at nine oh-four." She couldn't help a grimace at that, eliciting another smirk from the other detective.

"You don't like bats, Sykes?"

"They're rats. With wings," she informed him. "And they suck the blood out of their prey. No one likes them."

"They can see at night using sonar vision." He sounded appreciative, but Amy remained unimpressed:

"I have a phone that can do that. And it doesn't give me rabies."

Sanchez flashed her one last amused look before his expression turned serious again, and he addressed the DPS officer. "Are there cameras here?"

"Only at the entrances."

"We're gonna need the footage from those, too."

The officer nodded; they'd requested the same from the last two research buildings, so he'd expected it this time, as well.

Having finished adding the latest information to their timeline, Sykes glanced up and down the corridor one last time. "Does everyone who comes into the building need to sign in?"

The man shook his head. "No. The only reason the Animal Care guys do is so people can make sure the animals are being taken care of every day. If there's no note of someone feeding and changing their water, then one of the students will do it. That way the animals don't get mistreated," he explained.

The two detectives exchanged a slightly frustrated look; even though they now had a slightly better idea of Donnell's whereabouts, progress was slow.

"Let's check out the rest of the rooms on the list," said Julio.

* * *

They checked the sign-in sheets at a few other animal colony rooms, three of which smelled like mice, one with some weird ventilation noises coming from inside, and one that instantly became Sykes' favorite so far on account of no smell.

The Animal Care director met them on their way out, just as they exited the elevator back onto the first floor.

"Did you find what you were looking for?"

Amy's eyebrows arched. "I thought you didn't work on Sundays."

"So did I," the older woman said dryly, "before the LAPD starting asking questions about animal research and my employees. I got a phone call from the dean…" She sighed, shaking her head. "You have no idea how sensitive this whole thing is. What did James do, anyway? He didn't harm any of the animals, did he?" She sounded anxious. "The last thing we need is to spark the interest of the protesters… they usually prefer to make a scandal at the UCLA, and I'd like to keep it that way."

"We don't think he harmed any of the animals," Sykes allowed. "In fact it seems like he completed his rounds just fine last night." She left it unsaid that they might want to get someone else to do it tonight.

The ACF director let out a relieved breath. "Great. I told you, we never had any problems with him. So what happened?"

The two detectives exchanged a glance. It wasn't their obligation, or their habit, to reveal more information than necessary. Sanchez took a step forward.

"Ma'am, are you sure you don't have any poisonous animals on campus?"

The woman groaned. "Oh god, if the dean hears this. No, we don't – well, at least not in the research facilities," she amended. "I'm not responsible for what the students bring with them. Couple of years ago one of them snuck in a baby alligator."

"No… snakes? No … tarantulas?" Amy tried to think what else could fall under a similar category. "Scorpions…?"

"We're not the circus!" protested the director. "All we have are rodent colonies, a small primate colony, the echolocation lab… some zebrafish and sea slugs…" She made brief pauses as she mentally counted off their research labs.

"And you're sure none of the animals can be toxic in any form?" Amy reiterated.

"No! Well –" The woman paused.

Under Sanchez and Sykes' intent stares, she looked a little wary all of a sudden.

"Yes?" prompted Julio.

The ACF director pinched the bridge of her nose. "They're not _poisonous_… but I suppose there _are_ the frogs..."

* * *

" – the tree frog toxin is on its way to the lab for testing. But if Dr. Morales is right, we can assume that's what caused Donnel's liver damage and hallucinations."

Sharon shook her head. No wonder the lab hadn't identified this. Two-inch frogs were far, far down on _her_ list of possible weapons, too.

"Julio and Amy are bringing in the researchers in charge of the … frog lab." The things they had to deal with in their cases. "We'll see if one of them can explain how Mr. Donnell came into contact with the toxin. Did Provenza and Flynn check in?"

Tao nodded. "Nothing that stands out at our guy's home," he updated her. "No signs of a girlfriend or roommates, and no traces of any sort of home-made bomb materials. They're going to question the neighbors about Donnell, then bring in his computer and personal files."

A glance at the clock showed just past three-thirty. She'd been on this case over eight hours, and her team even longer. And all they had so far was an environmentally conscious opinion blog and a toxic tree frog.

Lowering the printouts of Donnell's phone records that she'd been scanning (two to his parents, one to the utilities company, and the rest to university numbers and local delivery places), she made her way toward the break room. It was definitely time for another coffee. She briefly considered texting to see if Rusty had gotten home… but he hadn't left _that_ long ago and he wouldn't appreciate all the checking up on him.

She'd hoped that he might spent the rest of the afternoon at the station, after all it was plenty quiet on a Sunday and he'd have homework help from Buzz… but Rusty had pointed out that he hadn't brought his school things along and like, he could go get them if she _really_ wanted him to, but…

She'd dropped it, of course, smiled and said 'just a thought' and finished the last bit of her salad on the safer topic of a grocery list.

Her eyes wandered over the phone records again as she waited for the break room coffee machine to finish a new batch, but her thoughts were elsewhere.

Maybe she owed Dr. Joe another call. Rusty had taken three weeks to finally consider going to see him for actual therapy, and then he'd gone once and had been postponing scheduling the second session since then. If something had happened during that one meeting, he hadn't told her about it and she'd run out of subtle ways to pry.

Of course, wheedling information out of the doctor instead wasn't a promising avenue, either – they'd been there already. 'Talk to Rusty', he'd say, and Sharon was _trying,_ only… communication was a challenge, these days.

It was hard to tell how much of it was typical teenage sullenness, and how much of it was… something else.

And the inconsistency was maddening. One day everything was fine and the next Rusty was cancelling plans on her abruptly and complaining that what did she expect, that he'd want to spend all his spare time hanging around police officers, _he_ had like, an actual _life_, you know.

Which, granted, wasn't that far off the spectrum of typical teenage behavior.

Maybe she _was_ overreacting.

Although if she had to hear 'what's the big deal, Sharon' _one_ more time…

She allowed herself a small groan into the fresh coffee cup.

"Long day, huh, Ma'am?"

The voice startled her enough to send a little coffee spilling onto her skin, and Sharon swivelled on her heels to face the doorway. Her eyebrows arched.

"Officer Cooper." She easily slipped into her inscrutable Captain Raydor voice. "What are you still doing here?"

The young man cleared his throat. "Well, I'm off duty so I was going to get a coffee and… stick around, see if you need any extra help. Happy to assist."

Oh dear God. "The detailed incident report you gave Lt. Flynn is sufficient," she assured him.

"I don't mind, I mean if you can use –"

"Thank you," said Sharon, "but it's really not necessary for you to stay. You had a long shift last night. Go home." She stopped herself just before adding 'we've got this', because maybe there _was_ such a thing as too much sarcasm.

* * *

"Sykes is with one of them in Interview 1, and the research assistant is waiting in Interview 2, Ma'am. The other two researchers are on their way in."

"What about the professor in charge of the lab?" asked Sharon.

Julio's expression grew a notch more deadpan. "He's at a conference. In Hawaii." His eyebrows rose fractionally. "He's getting paid to do that. Ma'am, can we go to conferences?"

Her lips curled in an amused smile. "Not with the Chief's budget cuts, I'm afraid."

"We should go to conferences," he opined.

At his desk, Tao put down the phone before looking up. "Flynn and Provenza finished searching Donnell's house and talking to the neighbors. No signs of anything suspicious… and still no indication of who his friends might've been." He responded to the Captain's displeased expression with a sympathetic grimace. "They're on their way back with his laptop and his personal files."

She nodded; that, at least, was sure to get them more information. Tao was truly a miracle worker when it came to digging out secrets from a variety of electronic equipment.

"Did we search Mr. Donnell's workspace at the university…?" Did he even have a workspace there? His job entailed zero desk time. "Is there some common office for the Animal Care employees?"

"No assigned desk space, Ma'am," Julio replied, "but I think he had a locker. We didn't get to that, I'll look into…"

When he paused and gave a meaningful eyebrow wriggle in the direction of the door, Sharon half-turned and glanced over her shoulder. Disbelief crossed her face at the sight of Officer Cooper once again.

"_Yes_." She let a fair amount of impatience seep into her tone; was she going to have to _order_ him to stop hanging around?

He walked up to her and handed her a handful of papers. "You left these in the break room, Captain."

Donnell's phone records. She took them, suppressing a sigh.

"Thank you." She looked meaningfully toward the door. "Enjoy the rest of your –"

"Hey, I know that guy."

His comment derailed Sharon's pointed suggestion that he take off; she followed his gaze to the murder board. "What?"

The young patrol officer tapped the photo, reading the name underneath. "James Donnell. I've seen him before."

Her eyes narrowed. "You told Lt. Flynn in your statement that you didn't know the victim."

He grimaced a little uncomfortably. "Well – uh, I didn't recognize him when we found him. His face was kind of…you know." Another grimace. "Anyway, yeah, I know that guy. Last month we caught him and his buddies getting high near the old shipyard."

Sharon glanced to Tao, who was already at his keyboard. "There's no record of his arrest anywhere," the lieutenant confirmed.

"We didn't arrest them," Cooper explained. "One of them had a permit, and they dumped everything over the side before we got to them… so we just let them off with a warning about smoking weed in public places and filled out an incident report."

There was a brief silence as they processed the news, then Sharon let out a long breath.

"Are you sure this was one of the men you saw?"

"Yes Ma'am. I have good photographic memory. That's him."

"Do you have a name for his friend who had the permit?" With the way Cooper and his partner were filling their incident reports, she had to ask.

When he confirmed that they did, Tao began to look up the report. "Danny Murray," he said after less than a minute. "Twenty-two, works as a delivery man for... a ... local hardware and supply store," he added as he read more. "_Couple_ of mentions of marijuana possession in his records – Provenza's going to be happy," he noted, remembering the older lieutenant's earlier predictions, "but nothing serious. I've got an address here."

Sharon nodded, her expression thoughtful. Then she let out another long sigh. "Alright – Mike," she waited for Tao to look up from his screen again, "until Lts. Flynn and Provenza bring you the laptop, would you mind assisting Det. Sykes in interviewing the researchers who had access to the tree frogs? I want to know why, if these animals were poisonous, there weren't more safety measures in place – and if there were, I want to know how Mr. Donnell could have avoided them."

"Yes, Captain."

She gave him a restrained sort of smile, then turned her head to Sanchez. "Julio… with me. We're going to pay Mr. Murray a visit. _Yes_, Officer Cooper," she gave the young man a dry sideways glance when he took a step forward and opened his mouth, "you're coming too. I'm going to need you to identify the men you saw with Mr. Donnell."

It took most of her self control to not roll her eyes when he looked about ready to break into a celebratory dance.

* * *

The neighborhood looked peaceful enough, though maybe not the most luxurious of real estate. The houses were small, the yards not as well kept up as they could have been, paint was chipping here and there and there was rust around the street lamps and dust on the porches – but overall it looked like a quiet residential area.

Sanchez parked the car in front of a house painted grey-blue, and the three of them got out.

They walked up the dusty walkway to the front door, Julio staying a step ahead of Sharon and at the ready. When Officer Cooper fell into step with him, the detective responded with a pointed glare; the young man fell back only to see Sharon's impatient look instead.

The first knock on the door went unanswered.

Cooper glanced in through the window. "There's definitely movement in there. Someone's home."

Sanchez knocked again, louder. "Danny Murray?"

It took a third knock for someone to open the door, a girl in her late teens or maybe very early twenties. She gave them a dreamy smile and brushed an errant strand of unkempt hair from her forehead. Her smile froze a little as she studied the three of them more carefully. Then her gaze landed on Cooper's badge, and her eyes widened.

"Shit. Cops‼"

With that alarmed cry, she backpedaled into the house and made a straight line to the back door. A couple of other people stumbled over each other to follow her out. In the middle of the commotion, Sanchez stepped inside, followed immediately by the young patrol officer. Sharon walked in after them, wrinkling her nose as the strong smell hit her.

Noticing her reaction, Cooper gave a serious nod:

'That's weed, Ma'am," he informed her.

She spared him a wry look, lips pursing imperceptibly. "Thank you, officer." She refrained from adding that oh, _that_ was what weed smelled like, wow, and here she'd gone thirty years on the force without knowing that.

Some other few young people were popping out from various corners and fleeing toward the back door with varying degrees of motor coordination. At the foot of the staircase, Sanchez stopped one of them with the aid of a hand on the shoulder and his scariest look. "Where's Danny?"

The boy's eyes widened. "Uh, upstairs, man, I didn't do anything, I'm not even, this isn't what it looks like, I was just like, looking for my…"

"Do you want to go to prison?" barked Julio. "Is that what you want?"

"No, dude! Like…no…!"

"Then I better not catch you doing anything like this again, do you get it?" He didn't wait for a reply before scowling harder. "I didn't hear you!"

The kid didn't know how to acknowledge the order faster, and he scrambled out as soon as Julio released him.

Sharon gave her detective an amused, knowing look. Sometimes he enjoyed the scary act a little too much. He kept up the straight face even as his shoulders twitched in a minute shrug.

"Doing what I can to keep kids away from drugs, Ma'am."

As the house emptied out, the three of them made their way up the stairs toward the room at the end of the hall. Again Julio took point, pulling out his gun and motioning Sharon to stay back. She did, although by the looks of it a violent confrontation was likely not in the cards.

The door to the room wasn't closed all the way; when Sanchez pushed it open, a pungent cloud erupted into the hallway.

Sharon took another step back, grimacing as her eyes began to sting. Even the detective had to clear his throat before speaking.

"Danny Murray?"

She peered into the room in time to see a young man glance up from his seat on the floor; there were two others with him, another man and a girl, the three of them seated around a low coffee table that held mugs, a few half-chewed pizza crusts, and the remains of what looked like a very elaborate board game.

"Are you Danny Murray?" Julio asked again, though they could all recognize Danny from his DMV photo.

"Uh… yeah, man." He stared at the gun in the detective's hand. "Is that like, real?"

"Yeah." The scary act was back. "You know what else is real?" Julio showed his badge. "LAPD. We're gonna need you to accompany us downtown."

"Awesome," the girl giggled.

Cooper pointed to the other young man. "He was also with Murray and Donnell that day at the docks. I recognize him, too."

Sharon stepped around the coffee table, glancing down at the man. "What's your name?"

"Uh…Diego…?"

She waited, and he just stared up looking confused at her still-expectant expression.

"Last name, genius," growled Sanchez.

"Oh. Uh. Do I have to tell you that?" He glanced between the three of them. "Don't you need like, a warrant?"

"Not to ask you to identify yourself, no," Sharon said with a smile.

"Oh."

The girl peered up at Sharon. "You've got like, seriously awesome hair." Then she noticed the bong on the table and tried to surreptitiously cover it with a pile of board game cards.

The top card read 'Dilapidated Haunted Catacombs!' in bold horror-movie-font letters.

Sharon was getting a headache.

It took another five minutes to finally ID and rouse the three, and convince them that yes, they did _actually_ have to come downtown and no, they couldn't stop for fries on the way. 'Diego' asked for a lawyer once and the bathroom three times. The girl tried to curl her fingers through Sharon's hair when Sharon wasn't looking.

The Captain prayed for patience, and hoped that the sense of calm enveloping her was a response to the circumstances, not the weed.

And ugh, she was just _never_ going to get the smell out of her clothes.

* * *

**No cliffhanger! But I *will* say that one of the lines in this chapter is a thinly veiled prediction of what awaits one of our favorite characters in the not-too-distant future ;). **

**Thank you for reading. You know I love hearing from you! How else can I survive the next eighty-six days with my sanity more-or-less intact?  
**

**(just kidding - my sanity hasn't been intact since like, 1999.) **


	7. Heartbeat

**Thanks to everyone reading and reviewing. Hearing from you always makes my day :). **

**A Tangled Web (7)**

"_Look man, we weren't doing anything wrong, Jimmy said nothing happened to the frogs and it was only like, a few times…_"

The young man's voice sounded a little slurred even through the speakers. Sharon tilted her head, her expression disbelieving. "Did he just say that Donnell brought the tree frog toxin home for them to get high on?"

Buzz glanced up from his seat. "I think he did."

She pinched the bridge of her nose, turning her attention back to the screen.

"_How did he get the toxin from the frogs?_" In the interview room with Danny Murray, Det. Sanchez did not look like he was having a good time.

"_Uh, I don't know, dude… Jimmy's like, real smart. He knows like, all this animal stuff and how to take care of them and whatever. That's his job. But he's like, smart - smart, you know?_"

* * *

"Smart like what?"

"Like, you can tell when he talks." Danny gave a wise nod. "Jimmy knows what he's talking about, man. Hey, can I have another of these cereal bars?" He crinkled the empty wrapper, causing Julio to scowl.

"No. How often did he bring the tree frog venom for you three to get high on?"

The young man scratched his eyebrow. "Uh…not that often...? He said something about the frogs needing to… make more, or something. Like cows with milk, you know? Only cows make milk every day. Guess frogs aren't like cows… unless they are…?"

Sanchez shot a stony look into the hidden camera.

* * *

"If Mr. Donnell repeatedly used the tree frog toxin to get high, is it possible for him to have damaged his liver over time?"

Standing next to the Captain in electronics, Tao shrugged a little uncertainly. "Yes…? In theory…? It's hard to tell what the repeated use of the bufotoxin – that's the psychoactive substance on the frogs' skin – can do to the human organism," he admitted. "There are a few tribes in Central and South America that employ tree frogs in their ceremonies, but other than that no one _actually_ uses the toxin to get high," he pointed out, "so there aren't a lot of studies on the effects of long-term use in humans..."

"Actually," Buzz looked up from the screens, "google says there were some instances of use by teenagers and college hippies around the 70s… but the ownership and import of the species became regulated in the mid-eighties so people don't have access to the frogs anymore." He paused and amended. "Unless they work at a research lab, I guess."

Sharon grimaced. "I can't believe this," she murmured, then glanced to Tao again. "Is it even illegal for James Donnell to have used the tree frog toxin?"

"Uh… not from a substance abuse point of view, no. That specific toxin is not of the list of illegal controlled substances. Actually extracting it from the frog might count as … a felony, maybe?" Tao looked doubtful. "It would definitely contravene the Animal Care rules, they're not supposed to mess with the research animals, but again I'm pretty sure it's not _illegal_…"

She sighed, shaking her head. "So our victim regularly took a highly psychoactive substance, toxic enough to cause lethal damage to his liver – he took that from a research facility and distributed it to his friends so they could all get high… and there's nothing actually against the law in there."

They both had to think on that for a second.

"There might be something…" amended Mike. "I mean, if you put it that way it sounds like there should be _some_ law that he was breaking…"

"Isn't that kind of a moot point?" Buzz looked confused. "He's already dead."

"Yes," Sharon nodded thoughtfully, "but I like to have a clear picture of exactly what happened before we declare a case closed." She leaned toward the microphone and pressed a button to activate the connection to Julio's earbud. "Detective, ask Mr. Murray about 'Zero Footprint' and the bomb threats…"

Another quick glance at the camera and an imperceptible nodded told them that Sanchez had heard her. He leaned forward in his seat.

"_So Jimmy's real smart, huh Danny? Did he ever talk about his blog?_"

* * *

" – said we gotta be more careful with like, the planet. You know? Like, what if the planet just… stops growing things? Jimmy says that might happen…"

"Does Jimmy have a way to stop that?"

The young man crinkled the empty cereal bar wrapper again. "Uh…" He stared at Julio with a wary gaze. "Yeah, like… don't drink water out of bottles and like, turn the lights off and stuff. Look man, why don't you ask Jimmy all this stuff? He'll tell you. Where is he, anyway?" He scratched at his cheek. "Did something happen?"

The detective ignored all the questions. "Does Jimmy have any problems that you know of?"

"Problems…?"

"Is he depressed? Angry? Frustrated?" Julio was exhibiting signs of the latter, himself.

"No? No, Jimmy's chill," said Danny. "He's chill, dude. He likes his job and stuff… he's real good at it, even some professor dude said so. Jimmy's good, man."

* * *

"So I suppose we've got a character witness to rule out suicide."

Sharon nodded at Tao's comment. "So he did jump off the bridge because he was too high to realize the danger." She couldn't help a regretful frown; the death felt like such a waste. It never ceased to scare her, how quickly someone went from being alive to … not being there anymore. In the space of a heartbeat. And sometimes, there was just no reason for it to have happened at all.

"And it looks like he administered that frog toxin to himself… repeatedly…" the lieutenant pointed out, "so I guess that rules out attempted murder…"

She hummed, "I guess," tilting her head as she stared back at the monitors again. Buzz and Tao caught the note of doubt in her tone, and gave her identical curious glances.

"You don't agree, Captain?" asked Buzz. Sharon bit her lips, looking thoughtful.

"Does this young man look the least bit sick to you?" On the monitor, Danny was taking a sip of his coffee and gesticulating wildly with his other hand. Tao quirked an eyebrow:

"No…?"

"He looks stoned," added Buzz.

Sharon acknowledged the comment with another hum. "But if Donnell brought home the toxin so they could _all_ get high _together_, and it was the gradual buildup that damaged his liver and caused his delusional rant, shouldn't his friends show some of the same symptoms?"

Mike nodded as he thought about it. "Danny did say that Jimmy extracted the toxin from the frog's skin – he might've gotten exposed to it more than they did," he offered.

"But how _much_ more?"

"It's also possible Donnell just overdid it on the night that he died," Tao added. "Seems like he was the leader of their little group, maybe he decided to try it by himself and didn't dose it properly… Or he could've touched the frogs too much while trying to extract the toxin…"

The Captain dipped her head; that was very likely true. "Either way, when we're done I'd like Mr. Murray and his friend 'Diego' checked out by a doctor," she requested. "Let's make sure they're not going to follow in Jimmy's footsteps."

* * *

It had passed six p.m. by the time they finished interviewing the dead man's friends, and Sharon was forced to admit that foul play was looking less and less likely. James Donnell had clearly used the tree frog toxin of his own volition, on repeated occasions, and though she wasn't clear on why or how he'd overdone it on Saturday night, that was one answer that could wait until the next day.

"What did I tell you?" Standing by the murder boards, Provenza uncapped a marker. "Young eco hippies and drugs… or in this case, exotic animal toxins." He finished a quick drawing of a stylized frog next to Donnell's photo, and shook his head. "What happened to good old _weed,_ and magic mushrooms?"

"Maybe he didn't find them organic enough," scoffed Flynn.

His partner arched his eyebrows, nodding slowly. "It's not easy being green…"

That earned him amused huffs from Flynn and Tao, and even Sharon allowed herself a fleeting smile – although Provenza had shot a meaningful look in her direction at the mention of weed, and she was still harboring her best warning glare.

"Mike – anything on Mr. Donnell's computer yet?"

"I've logged on to his blog as admin," the lieutenant said, "and I'm looking through moderated posts and comments that weren't visible to the public. There are a few angry commenters, as you might expect – this one guy thinks flooding the whole west side of the city would be a good idea – but so far, nothing to suggest that Donnell was actually rallying his followers, or anything. I don't think his site was a front for an eco group," he told her. "Just an opinion blog, like we thought earlier."

"There was nothing at his house, either," Andy provided. "Buzz has it all on tape, but it looked just like a regular bachelor pad. Only everything was recycled."

"His fridge looked like Flynn's," muttered Provenza.

"Hey, kale chips are a fine alternative to the greasy unhealthy stuff. They have sixty percent less sodium, did you know that?"

"No," the older man deadpanned, "and I didn't need to."

"It's ironic," Tao put in without looking up from the laptop, "that he was so passionate about eating healthy, yet if he hadn't jumped off the bridge, he'd have died of liver failure because of a toxin overdose…"

Sharon found it sad more than ironic.

"Did we establish that none of the researchers in the tree frog lab knew about what Mr. Donnell was doing?"

"Yeah, three of them didn't even know him – since he worked the night and weekend shifts, they never ran into him," said Tao. "One of the research assistants had seen him around on occasion, but she swears she had no idea and nothing to do with him extracting the toxin from the frogs, and I think I believe her."

She sighed. "That still doesn't change the fact that because of improper safety measures, a young man was able to abuse and distribute an unregulated toxic substance, and it likely led to his death."

"That's not gonna look good for the university," Mike agreed. "Donnell's parents might have grounds to sue them."

"That's the least of my concerns right now," said Sharon. "I'd like to make sure that we don't get another incident like this… I want someone to call the university and report this, and if necessary open a file looking into their safety and handling protocols."

Flynn nodded and walked back over to his desk, reaching for the phone. Provenza gave the Captain a sober look.

"Speaking of parents…have we notified Donnell's yet…?"

She shook her head. "Tomorrow." There would be no point in them driving down to LA tonight, and Sharon couldn't release their son's body yet, anyway. "I'll be making the call first thing in the morning."

It was a part of the job she'd never get used to, the gruesome task of breaking the news to parents that their children would never come home again. She couldn't help but think of the child waiting for _her_ at home...it was an insidious, unspoken fear, that one day she'd be the one on the receiving end of such a notification.

An irrational fear. But it _felt_ real.

Suddenly she was anxious to end the day and go home to Rusty.

"Alright," she said softly. "Given the evidence so far, I don't think there's any indication of an immediate threat to public safety, and it looks like we'll be able to rule Mr. Donnell's death as an accidental overdose. Dr. Morales can make the official pronouncement on his report tomorrow morning." She surveyed the murder room with a searching glance, to make sure she wasn't forgetting anything. "As soon as Det. Sanchez brings Danny and Diego back from the clinic, and once I have someone's assurance that there are no other uncontrolled toxins being abused at the university, we can call it a day. I'll call Chief Taylor to inform him of the progress."

The rest of them expressed their agreement with a mixture of nods and grunts; Flynn could be heard asking the operator for the number of one of the USC deans, while Tao continued to explore the contents of Donnell's laptop. Provenza leafed through the mail they'd brought back from the man's house in a large blue recycle bin, and Sharon retreated a few steps and pulled out her phone.

Her eyes were drawn once more to the photos of James Donnell on the murder board – the young man almost-smiling in his DMV shot, next to the grainy camera footage photo of his body at the foot of the bridge. Provenza's frog cartoon drawn beneath them made for a tragicomic effect.

'Real smart', his friends had called Jimmy, 'a good guy' – and maybe he was, but even so his actions had cost him his life. And somewhere, his parents were probably having their regular Sunday night dinner, with no idea that their son was dead. Come morning, Sharon's phone call would change their lives.

She sighed, and dialed Taylor.

* * *

When Sharon stepped inside the condo an hour later to find the living room empty, she felt only a brief moment of discontent. Yes, it didn't make her happy that Rusty was spending so much time in his room lately… but in this instance, she was too tired and hassled to expend much energy worrying about that. After over twelve hours spent chasing what was turning out to be a convoluted drug overdose case, all she wanted was a quiet evening and a glass of wine.

She took off her shoes with a mental note to never again wear heels to work on a Sunday. She was halfway to the kitchen when she realized that however much she wanted a glass of wine, she may have wanted a shower even more. It was a tough choice, which left her vacillating by the living room table for a moment.

Her attention was diverted at the sound of Rusty's door opening. He peered out, spotted her and walked over.

"I thought I heard you."

Sharon hummed a tired greeting and even mustered a half-smile for him. She hoped he wouldn't catch the terrible smell on her clothes.

"So did you figure out what happened to that guy who jumped off the bridge?"

Her answer was a lopsided nod. "Yes… and no. I still have a few unanswered questions," she admitted. "But in the end, it doesn't look like someone killed him."

"So what you're saying is, you guys had to work all day Sunday, and there wasn't even a murder." He was giving her one of those wriggly-eyebrows, wiseass looks of his, and Sharon had to envision presenting Taylor with the overtime sheets as a coping mechanism.

"I'm generally happy when there is no murder to solve," she replied in kind, walking over to surreptitiously open the balcony doors for extra ventilation. "Did you have dinner?"

"Yeah, I made some pasta… with sausage… saved you some, it's in the fridge."

"Oh – thank you." She smiled in appreciation, then noticed two tomatoes abandoned on the kitchen counter and frowned, confused. "Wait – how did you make pasta? We didn't have anything in the fridge."

Rusty gave her a funny look. "Uh, I went to the store and bought the ingredients…?" His tone clearly said 'duh'.

"You went to the – _Rusty_." Sharon arched her eyebrows. "I thought we agreed that you'd wait for me to go grocery shopping."

"Yeah, Sharon, but like, I don't _need_ to wait. I can buy five tomatoes and some sausage on my own." He stuck his hands in the pockets of his pajama pants. "Besides, what did you want me to do?"

"You were supposed to make a list of the things you need," she reminded him, and the boy rolled his eyes.

"I did make a list," he grumbled, "and then I went and bought the stuff _on_ the list. What's the big deal, anyway? And you can close the window, by the way," he told her, "I could smell the weed from my room."

She froze, momentarily derailed. Damn it.

Rusty was giving her a wry look.

"Det. Sanchez and I had to visit the home of a person of interest," she said in as dignified a manner as possible. "Excuse me, I'm going to take a shower."

He fidgeted uncomfortably in his spot. "Are you like, mad at me because I went and got groceries?"

Sharon's shoulders dropped in a soft sigh. "I'm not mad, no. I just wish you'd consulted with me before changing the plan we _agreed_ on."

"Consulted – seriously? It's a grocery trip Sharon, I didn't go and like, sign a ten-year house lease without your permission." He rolled his eyes again, and she offered a restrained smile:

"It's the principle of the matter."

"Yeah, well, _my_ principle is not starving to death," Rusty informed her seriously, "and besides, you've been out since six a.m., I didn't think you'd want to wait in line an hour at the store."

Sharon opened her mouth to reply, then paused. "Well… I don't," she admitted, eliciting an exasperated teenage huff:

"So then what's the problem?"

She caught herself before even starting to explain; she was too tired to get into this now. "Next time," she told him pointedly, "_call me_ before you decide to change our plans."

"_Fine_, okay, I will," he replied, with the dramatic air of someone making the greatest concession of their life, and Sharon couldn't help an amused smirk, her irritation subsiding.

He watched her walk past him in the direction of the bathroom.

"Wow… how _long_ were you and Det. Sanchez at this person's house, exactly?"

* * *

"So this guy poisoned himself with a _frog_?" Rusty's face scrunched in disbelief. "What, were like, regular drugs not good enough or something?"

Sharon lifted a shoulder, piercing a bit of pasta with her fork. "There is always an attraction to things that are novel or riskier. Did you finish your homework?" It was her third attempt to divert the conversation away from their case; Rusty, however, seemed as determined to discuss nothing else as she was to discuss _anything_ else.

Sure, he might have been genuinely interested in James Donnell's fate – but more likely he was just trying to keep the conversation away from a particular topic, by keeping her on the safe subject of the case. And Sharon thought she knew exactly what he was avoiding.

"Yeah, we didn't have that much homework for tomorrow. Just Biology and that's like, one of the easy ones. So this guy, he jumped off the – "

"Do you need me to come talk to the principal, tomorrow?"

Rusty paused with his mouth open. Then he slumped in his chair. "_No_, Sharon. I already told you."

"_No_, you said that you're not in trouble –"

"I'm not!"

"I believe you," she said calmly. "But, if you feel that one of your classmates has a problem with you, that might _get_ you in trouble –"

"No one has a problem, okay? It was just… we had a disagreement," he muttered darkly. "That's all."

The 'disagreement' had left mud and grass stains all over his pants, and his shirt torn in two places.

When Sharon had seen the extent of the damage, after he'd tried to surreptitiously do laundry on Friday evening, she was fairly sure that her heart had stopped beating for a few seconds.

Then she'd gotten angry, because she'd been home at least three hours and had asked about ten times if everything was alright and how exactly did the state of his uniform qualify as 'nothing's wrong, Sharon' and 'school was fine'?!

Luckily, there hadn't seemed to be any actual physical damage, which was a huge step up from the last 'disagreement' he'd had with the boys at his school, and Rusty swore that no one was in the infirmary this time. Still…

"Rusty…"

"Look, Sharon, just… it's fine." He sounded somewhere between frustrated and pleading. "Nothing's wrong, you don't need to talk to the principal, we didn't get in trouble, everything's _fine_, okay? Just… can you drop it, _please_?"

No, she couldn't drop it! What was he thinking? He was lucky she hadn't started ringing the other parents to see who the other party was, who was involved in this 'disagreement'. Scratch that – he was lucky she hadn't opened an investigation!

She'd let the issue rest yesterday, in the hopes of discussing it more calmly today, but of course with the case that hadn't happened, and so now he was out of luck because she wasn't dropping anything until this was resolved to her satisfaction.

"Rusty, if someone's giving you a hard time, if you're getting into fights at school, I think we should take this up–"

"I'm not getting into fights," he protested, "can you _please_… God, Sharon!" He actually got up from the table, retreating a few anxious steps toward the sofa, and she pressed her lips together, lowering her fork back to the plate.

"This isn't convincing me that nothing's wrong," she pointed out in a calm, low tone.

"Yeah, neither is anything else," he said frustratedly, "because I've said it like, a hundred times and … I don't know what you want me to do, okay?"

She managed a strained half-smile. "First, I'd like you to sit back down," she waved a hand at the chair he'd jumped out of, "and then I'd like you to _tell me_ what happened Friday, so I can be assured that there's nothing going on at school that could be dangerous to –"

"_Dangerous_?" His voice nearly cracked on the word. "Dangerous? Sharon – being a witness in Stroh's trial is 'dangerous'! Being out on the streets with a psycho stalker after me, that was 'dangerous'! This is just school, okay, I can handle _school_, why can't you just…" He trailed off at the sight of her expression, and his shoulders slumped with a defeated sigh. He rubbed both hands over his cheeks, lowering himself to the arm of the sofa. "I'm sorry… I'm sorry, Sharon, I don't…" Rusty sighed, giving her a sad look. "I'm sorry. I know you mean well, it's just… you don't have to worry so much."

She couldn't even think of a reply to that.

"What happened Friday?" she asked quietly, and Rusty let his head drop into his hands again.

"Nothing happened, Sharon, I'm serious," he sighed. "Nothing important, we just had a stupid disagreement over some … stupid thing, and it got a little out hand but like… we didn't beat each other up or anything. The teachers didn't see us and no one got in trouble and then I came home and that was it, I swear."

"What was the disagreement about?"

He looked away, then, crossing his arms and letting out another disheartened sigh. "It was stupid. It doesn't matter."

"Rusty."

"It doesn't, okay? It's just… not even worth talking about." He shook his head, and when he met her eyes again he looked, if possible, even sadder. "I'm sorry for yelling at you. I didn't… I'm sorry, Sharon. It's… it was just a stupid fight at school, and I don't need you to worry about _every_ little thing in my _life_, okay?"

Sharon pressed her lips together, and his expression just grew more distressed.

"I swear, I'm not in trouble and I'm not gonna get in trouble and … just trust me, _please_." He let his head drop to his chest. "Can we like, not talk about this anymore? Please?"

Faced with his entreaties, there was nothing for her to do but acquiesce, though it was with great reluctance. But she couldn't _force_ him to talk to her, and pushing right now would've only made things worse. It was a fragile balance between them, lately. Just like many other times in the last few weeks, she wasn't even sure how they'd gone from having a normal conversation to an emotional argument.

Hearing the door to his room close, Sharon allowed herself a long sigh.

* * *

The shrill ring of her phone woke her up again. Groggily, she checked the clock on the nightstand that read just under six a.m., and groaned; this was becoming a bad habit. Sharon groped around for her phone and squinted at the screen enough to recognize the extension from downtown – wow, whoever was calling her must have already been at the station, so someone at least had woken up even earlier.

"Raydor," she answered, doing her best to keep the sleep out of her voice.

"_Captain – I'm sorry to wake you up this early, but if this means what I think it means, you might end up thanking me._"

Surprise cleared away most of her residual sleepiness. "Doctor Morales. What's wrong?"

"_So you know how sometimes you just get that feeling that you forgot something? And it really nags at you in the most annoying way possible? Well,_" he didn't wait for a reply, _"I didn't get to enjoy my Sunday after all, because of that feeling. And then when I woke up in the middle of the night and it still wasn't gone, I decided to go back and figure out what I'd missed._" He paused for breath, giving Sharon just enough time to ask:

"And…?"

"_Yesterday_," the doctor went on, "_we were busy asking who this guy was and how he died, so I looked at his face, and his brain, and his dental records, and the signs of poisoning in his organs… But _then_ you figured out that he died from overdosing on psychoactive tree frog venom,_" his tone indicated this was an important point, "_which normally works through either ingestion or skin absorption, and if he was handling the frogs to extract the toxin and came into contact with it that way, that would leave traces on his hands… which of course I didn't _see_ yesterday_," he was speaking so fast she could barely keep up, "_because well, for one, his hands were pretty mashed just like the rest of him, and there was blood all over them, but more importantly you already _had _his prints and you weren't looking for cause of death so I didn't pay as much attention to them as I should've –_"

"Doctor–" Sharon had to interrupt, because it was too early for this many words, and Morales sounded like he'd had way too much coffee. "What are you saying? What did you find on his hands?"

_"Found signs of where the toxin might've come into contact with his skin – I think. Like I said before I'm not an expert at this, but it looks like the right kind of tissue degeneration…_"

"So… you confirmed that he died from the poison of the tree frog." She wasn't sure why that was worth a phone call at not-even-six-a.m.

"_There's that, yes. But, while I was cleaning the tissue on his hands, I found traces of other substances, and since I was here at five a.m. anyway, for no apparent reason, I decided to test them myself and, long story short –_"

Very long story. "Yes…?"

" _–there were traces of explosives on his skin._"


	8. Stopwatch, pt 1

**Thanks everyone for reading and for your lovely comments:)  
**

**A Tangled Web (8)**

The doctor's words washed over her like a bucket of ice water.

Immediately alert, Sharon stood up properly and swung her legs over the side of the bed. "What?"

"_There were traces – _very small_ traces, of persulfuric acid. And yes, I'm sure,_" he anticipated her next question, "_I've worked here long enough to recognize it under a microscope. Now, I know persulfuric acid isn't exactly the rarest of chemical compounds, and there are plenty of _harmless_ reasons for it to be on this guy's hands, but since you were worried about a bomb threat yesterday…_"

"No, you did the right thing to call," she assured him. "I'm on my way. Can you look for any other traces, maybe indications of how it got onto his hands, what form it was in… anything else that could tell us… anything." Damn it! She'd wasted twenty-four hours dismissing the man and now a public site could be in danger and…

"_Don't panic,_" Morales recommended. "_I wasn't kidding when I said there were lots of explanations that _don't_ involve bombs…_"

Sharon was already pulling out an office outfit from her closet. "Until we find one, I'm going to treat this as a threat to the public safety." Which she should've done yesterday. How had she missed this? But there had been no signs, _none_… "Thank you, Doctor. Please let me know if you find anything else."

Once he said goodbye, she hung up and dialed Provenza while making her way to the bathroom to wash her face. The lieutenant's voice was grouchy when he picked up on the sixth ring.

"_If this is because I woke you up yesterday, Captain, I would like it noted that payback is beneath you._"

"Doctor Morales just found traces of explosives on James Donnell's hands." She launched straight into it; this was no time for humorous banter.

There was a brief pause, and when Provenza spoke again she could hear the change in his tone. "_I'll be at the station in thirty minutes_."

"Thank you – can you please –"

"_I'll rouse the rest of the troops, don't worry,_" he acquiesced before she'd even finished asking, and Sharon thanked him again and went to rouse her own troops.

* * *

"'s not six-thirty yet…" The amount of grumpy whining he could infuse into five mumbled words was impressive.

"No it's not, but I have to leave right now," Sharon pulled on her blazer as she spoke. "You're on your own for breakfast, but keep your phone with you. And Rusty, I want you to avoid the high-traffic boulevards when you go to school today. And come straight home after class. Do you hear me? _Rusty_!" she snapped at his sleepy growl, causing his head to actually poke out from under the comforter. "Did you hear what I said?"

"Yeah…" he peered at her through half-closed eyes. "'s going on?"

"Nothing you need to worry about." She pulled open the curtains, although there wasn't much sunlight streaming in at six a.m.. Sunrise wasn't for another hour. "Just do as I say. And be careful driving to school."

She ignored his sigh and scowl, and the pointed way he pulled the comforter back over his head.

"Text me when you get there," she reminded him, and only had to repeat herself once before he offered a muffled acknowledgment and Sharon was confident that he was conscious enough to actually process her instructions.

* * *

By six-thirty, everyone was in the murder room, alert and annoyed and looking about ready to blow something up themselves.

"Do we still have Donnell's friends Danny and Diego?"

Julio nodded. "Yes Ma'am, we kept them here last night."

A decision for which Sharon was now twice as grateful. She'd wanted the two in custody overnight so she could ask an attorney in the morning if there was anything she could charge them with. Now, she cared far less about the tree frog toxin abuse; she sought a whole different set of answers from them.

"I want them brought back into separate interview rooms. And test _them_ for traces of explosives, too!"

The detective left immediately; the atmosphere in the room only grew more intense as she continued to issue orders.

"Mike, Buzz – I need you to look through the footage from Donnell's home, through his documents and files, for any indication of what his target might've been. Forget about trying to ascertain whether or not he was planning something," she told them, "as of this moment we're _assuming_ that he was, and trying to figure out where to look."

As soon as they acknowledged and started on the task, she turned to the remaining three members of the team.

"I want Donnell's locker searched. Call for a K-9 unit to detect the presence of explosives, and I'll notify the bomb squad to be on alert if we need to call them in. And let's have the dogs check his home, too – and the homes of his two friends," she added as an afterthought. "Lieutenant Provenza, I want you and Lt. Flynn on that, since you're already familiar with Donnell's house. Amy, you take the locker. Call the Animal Care director to notify her of our search and get access to their facilities."

As Sykes and Flynn reached for their phones, Tao stood up from his desk and walked to the printer.

"This is a list of all the public sites Donnell mentioned in his blog posts in the last six months," he handed Sharon the page he'd just printed, "as you can see there's a lot of them, the aqueduct, the 110, Robertson Blvd., Staples Center, Griffith park… plus other parks, stadiums and shopping centers that he doesn't mention by name…"

"In other words," Provenza put in, "if we try to pick a place that Captain Planet didn't like, we're looking at a needle in a haystack kind of situation."

The lieutenant sighed. "Donnell saw problems with the emissions, the energy expenditures and the social impact of a lot of the city's infrastructure," he agreed. "But he doesn't single out any of them more than others – and like I said before, none of these posts are really threatening…"

"What about his search history? Emails?" Sharon browsed the long list that he'd handed her. "Do any of these places get repeated mentions?"

Another grimace from Tao. "He used his computer a lot. There are dozens of hits on search engines every day. I'll try to cross-reference everything and see what gets mentioned more than once," he agreed, "but that might not narrow down the list too much. So far the only place that stands out at all is the 6th Street Viaduct, and that one only because our guy jumped off it…" He gave the Captain a look that was almost apologetic. "Not exactly a great place to start."

"Might be a better place than we think," Sharon murmured thoughtfully. "We still don't know what Mr. Donnell was doing at the bridge, or even how he got there." She glanced at the map pinned to the murder board. "What did he have to say about it in his blog?"

Tao walked back to his computer. "He first mentions the viaduct in an entry about ten months ago, in relation to an old abandoned project that was supposed to design a more efficient irrigation system from the LA river to the inner-city parks…" He scrolled down the page, refreshing his memory. "Donnell makes the argument that the project should be revisited again, and how better irrigation might solve the city's growing water problem. Then there's a second mention in reply to one of his follower's comments…" he clicked to a different page, "…and it's again talking about sustainable civil engineering and efficient irrigation." The lieutenant shook his head. "Sorry. Still not very useful. He also has a few web searches on it, but nothing more recent than a month or so, and nothing out of the ordinary."

"_I_ find your repeated use of the word 'nothing' in relation to our evidence _extra-_ordinarily disheartening." Provenza leaned back in his chair with a disgruntled sigh. "After we got up in the middle of the night two days in a row for this guy, at least he could do us the courtesy of leaving behind something to find."

The look that Sharon gave him made him sit a little straighter in his chair, and clear his throat.

"Not that I wouldn't greatly prefer it if there _was_ no bomb, Captain," he amended, "but at this pace I'll be old enough to retire before we figure out if there is or there isn't and what exactly was going on with this Donnell!"

"You're _already_ old enough to retire," Flynn pointed out as he put down the phone on his desk; ignoring his partner's eye roll, he turned to Sharon. "We'll have dog units meeting us at Donnell's home and the university. Warrant's on the way for the other two houses."

"Ma'am." Julio appeared in the doorway again. "I've got Dumb and Dumber back in the interview rooms."

Sharon nodded her acknowledgment, and surveyed the whole team again with one final glance. Everyone had different duties, and she hated to split them up like that. But there was simply too much to do, and if there _was_ a bomb out there, they were in a race against the clock.

"Lt. Tao. Contact Traffic and tell them to close the 6th Street bridge," she said quietly. "Have patrol cars on the scene, and send a unit to check for explosives." No one was asking her to explain herself, but she did anyway: "If it's the only lead we have, we can't afford to ignore it. That bridge is still a public site, and maybe blowing it up doesn't make sense to me or you, but at this point, I no longer feel confident in our ability to read James Donnell's intentions."

Clearly not the least inclined to disagree with her, Tao just reached for the phone. Sharon directed her attention to the two other lieutenants and Det. Sykes, all of whom were ready to set out.

"Let me know the second you find anything," she asked them. "And _please_… be careful."

Then she followed Julio in the direction of the interview rooms, hoping with every step that they still had _time_.

* * *

Twenty-four year old Diego wanted a lawyer. Upon being informed that, not finding himself under arrest, he did not have the right to counsel, he demanded his dad. He also didn't know anything. He wanted his phone call. Could he use the bathroom?

They decided on a more direct approach with Danny.

" –_up in flames! All of it! Context, gone…the crowds, gone! And you people_…"

A burst of static masked the next words, then a few seconds of silence were followed by a distinct splatter sound and some metallic clanging. Danny Murray stared blankly at the recorder as the audio ended.

"That's Jimmy?"

Sanchez leaned forward slightly, hands flat against the table. "What was he talking about?"

"Uh… I don't know…?" The young man looked even more bleary-eyed and confused than the previous evening. "Are you sure that's him? He sounded kinda... weird."

"That's because he was high on the tree frog toxin." Julio scowled harder. "What. Was Jimmy _talking about_. Why was he at the bridge?"

"I don't know man, honest!" Danny scratched at his nose.

Sharon tapped her pencil lightly against the notepad in front of her. "Yesterday," she said in a conversational manner, "you told Det. Sanchez that you were supposed to meet Jimmy on Saturday night, and he never showed."

"Yea, but I didn't know he was – that he – I didn't know he, like…"

"What were you supposed to do last night, huh Danny?" demanded Julio. "Were you gonna go blow up something?"

The man's eyes widened. "No?"

"Are you sure, 'cause your friend there, he sounds like he was talking about blowing up a bunch of people! And we found traces of explosives on him!"

"What? No, man," Danny shook his head frantically, "Jimmy uh, he'd never like, hurt people, dude! He's a good guy! He likes people! He wanted to save them!"

"Save them from what?" asked Sharon, and the young man visibly pulled back and gave a confused sort of shrug.

"I don't know… it says on his blog. Like, global warming and crowd thinking and stuff. Jimmy really cared about people," he repeated. "He'd never hurt anyone! Seriously!"

Sanchez leaned forward again, the same no-nonsense glint in his eyes. "Why were you gonna meet him on Saturday night?"

"…uh… just to like, hang out." Danny swallowed and scratched his neck.

The detective adopted a hard glower. "Are you sure about that?"

"…yes…?" the young man answered, looking not sure in the least.

"Think very carefully about what you're saying, Danny," Sharon advised in a friendly tone. "Because we're going to search Jimmy's house, and your house, and his workplace, and if we find evidence that he was planning anything and that you _knew_ about it," her eyebrows arched meaningfully, "you are going to be in a lot more trouble than you are now."

His mouth dropped open again. "Uh. Wait. You're going to search my house?" A beat, then. "All of it?"

Sharon paused for a moment. "Well… uhm, yes…" she cleared her throat and smiled, "…unless… you exercise your right to… constitutional domestic privacy," she finished with a slow nod.

Sanchez nodded in agreement.

Danny stared.

"What's that?"

"Well, according to California law," Sharon explained in a serious tone, "you have the inalienable right to maintain certain parts of your home private from police searches. So if you choose to exercise that right, then we'd be _obligated_ to forward the search team a list of places they're not allowed to touch."

"Really?"

"Oh, yeah," said Julio. "But anything _not_ on that list is fair game," he barked menacingly. "And you didn't _give_ us a list, so we're gonna be searching _your entire home_, from top to bottom, and anything we find there can be used _against_ you!"

"Wait!" Danny nearly fell out of his chair. "Wait man… can I still like, tell you where you're not allowed to look?"

The two police officers exchanged a glance.

Sharon checked her watch. "The search team is probably at your house already," she mused, "so you'd have to tell us _very quickly_ in order for us to inform them in time…"

* * *

"I think he knows something he's not telling, Ma'am," Julio said as soon as he'd closed the door to the interview room.

Sharon let out a slow breath. "I don't know. He seems convinced that 'Jimmy' wouldn't hurt anyone, but you're right, he's definitely hiding _something_. Unfortunately, I can't tell if it's anything useful to us." She tore the first page from her notepad and handed it to him. "Make sure Flynn and Provenza start by searching these locations at his house. And remind them to be careful, let the dogs run through first."

Tao looked up from his computer as soon as they'd re-entered the murder room.

"Captain, Traffic closed the 6th Street Bridge and they're checking it for explosives, but so far they haven't found anything. And I've been looking through Donnell's papers and files," he pointed to the recycle bin that Flynn and Provenza had brought back from the man's house, "but no luck yet. All his correspondence is just bills and ads, and other than that there's only a couple of grocery lists and some post-its with online game passwords."

Her tension headache was getting worse. Sharon glanced into the recycle bin, half-filled with envelopes, coupons and the assorted junk mail that was impossible to get away from no matter where one lived. "_All_ of his mail was in here?"

"Uh, there were a couple of fliers for pizza places and stuff on his coffee table, too, I guess…?" Buzz had followed her and Sanchez over from electronics as soon as they'd ended the interview. "But the lieutenants didn't think there was anything worth counting as evidence," he told her. "Here, you can see in the footage I got at his house…"

He sat down at his computer and pressed a few keys, then turned the screen for her to see. Sharon watched the panorama of a small and somewhat messy living room, the video going over a couple of common wall decorations, focusing for a few seconds on a dinky bookshelf with an assortment of sci-fi books and some vegetarian cookbooks, then moving to a close-up of an old coffee table. The camera zoomed in on a menu from a local organic pizzeria, a flier for a new shopping center opening, and a pamphlet on how to recycle electronics.

In other words, absolutely nothing that would've suggested any nefarious intentions.

If James Donnell had indeed been planning to blow up a public site, he had done a stellar job hiding his tracks. The only reason they'd had any suspicions in the first place was because he'd announced the bomb threat himself! And yet, there was no evidence. There was never _no_ evidence. No one was that good – especially not a twenty-three year old 'eco hippie', as Provenza had called him, whose idea of a good time was getting high on psychedelic frogs.

Maybe Danny hadn't been kidding when he'd called Jimmy 'real smart'.

Or maybe Morales was right… maybe the traces of an industrial oxidant on the man's hands had a different explanation, maybe it was all just innocuous coincidence.

Maybe if it came from Lt. Provenza's Guinness Book of Coincidences.

Her phone went off in one of those odd instances of synchronicity. "Yes, lieutenant."

"_Captain_," greeted Provenza, "_there were no traces of explosives at Donnell's house. We just got to Murray's ten minutes ago and we're having the dogs run through the locations Sanchez gave us. Somehow… I don't think we'll be getting exactly the answers we're looking for._"

"What do you mean?" Sharon frowned. "Did you find anything so far?"

"_Well – yes, but like I said, not what we were looking for._"

* * *

Provenza studied the array of random plants growing in a small unkempt patch in the back area of Danny Murray's roof. Well hidden by a roof fan and a TV antenna and masked by a large plastic cover of sorts, the search team might've missed it, had the owner of the house not helpfully pointed them in the right direction.

Except the right direction, in this case, wasn't also the useful direction.

Judging from the sigh on the other end of the line, the Captain agreed. "_Is there anything _else_ at the house, other than his illegal marijuana crop?_"

"Yes, in addition to Mr. Murray's obvious green thumb, we found a stash of Xanax pills in the microwave – for which _shockingly_ he has no prescription – but, no traces of explosives so far. We'll let the dogs do another run, then Flynn and I will look through his files and personal things."

Down in the street, he could hear the garage door opening with a loud metallic shriek.

"We'll keep you posted of any new discoveries," he promised Raydor, then rolled his eyes and stepped out of the way as another police dog bounded excitedly past him. Briefly, Provenza wondered what it must have been like for the dogs, with their advanced canine sense of smell. Their trainers might have to deal with a serious case of the dog munchies by the time they left Murray's little botanical garden of wonders.

"Hey. Provenza." Flynn's voice floated up to him, and the older lieutenant glanced over the side of the house, to see his partner standing by the garage. "Come take a look at this."

* * *

Sharon hung up the phone with a frustrated sigh. It didn't exactly surprise her that Danny's earlier apprehensions had to do with controlled substances, rather than a bomb plot… but even so, she couldn't shake the feeling that he did know more than he was telling them. What had 'Jimmy' shared about his plans? Were there even any plans to speak of?

She lowered her gaze to the new list that Lt. Tao had handed her. After cross-referencing the 'Zero Footprint' website and Donnell's emails and web searches, he'd narrowed it down to ten places that got repeated mentions. Unfortunately, other than the 6th St. Viaduct, none seemed to distinguish itself from the rest, and there was simply no way to dispatch units to search every single one. Two of them were public parks, for one, which would take forever to search… and then there was a major traffic artery, which if she so much as mentioned shutting down, the Mayor would probably kill her.

No, searching each of the sites would take more time and manpower than she could employ; they had to narrow it down more, find more evidence as to what Donnell was thinking in the hours before he died, see the picture better…

"Buzz." She spoke his name quietly as she walked up to his desk. "Can you play the crime scene audio for me again?"

It took a few seconds for Buzz to retrieve the file, and then James Donnell's staticy voice came through the speakers, the words now almost familiar:

_"…not the way to do it, man…who's gonna get it if we just blow everything up… this – the way to go – make everyone listen… everyone, listen‼ Listen to me!_"

Sharon bit her lips. It seemed that she was staring at scattered pieces of a puzzle, with no idea what the big picture was even supposed to look like. The signs they had so far pointed in opposite directions, the man's lifestyle, his writing and the testimony of his friends suggesting a peaceful outlook on life, while the traces of explosives on his hands and his last words gave a completely different impression.

" _–doing it all wrong – not how it's supposed to be! –zero footprint – don't need another – for – crowd… don't you see? It's all social pressure… impulse-driven behavior… but take away the context, and you change the behavior! _"

Something else occurred to her. "Mike." She handed the list of locations back to him. "Can you check these places against Donnell's blog entries that use the expressions 'social pressure' and 'impulse-driven behavior'? See if that narrows it down any further for us?"

As the lieutenant took the page from her and went back to his keyboard, Sharon's phone buzzed again, and she saw Lt. Flynn's name on the screen.

"_So Captain – there are no explosives at Murray's house either,_" he told her without preamble, "_but other than the weed on his roof and his stashes of Xanax, there's another thing you might want to ask him about…_"

She listened to his explanation, trying to put the new information into context, and again falling just short of figuring out the big picture. But Andy was right, she now had more questions to ask Danny Murray, and maybe this time he'd be scared enough to give her better answers.

"Julio," she turned to him as soon as she'd finished the call, "let's go talk to …" She trailed off, noticing that the detective had also been talking on his phone; he lowered it a few seconds later with a serious look.

"That was Sykes, Ma'am. Dogs went crazy over Donnell's locker," he told her. "Bomb squad just opened it, and found explosives stored inside."

And just like that, time seemed to halt again.

* * *

**This chapter ran a little long, and that's mostly because I really wanted Sharon and Sanchez to interview our stoner friend 'on screen' rather than behind the scenes. Can we really ever have *too* much of those two interviewing clueless suspects? I do not believe so ;).  
**

**Thank you for reading!**


	9. Stopwatch, pt 2

**Thank you all for reading / reviewing / following etc.. I always love to hear from you :). **

**A Tangled Web (9)**

"Technically, they weren't explosives, per se." Lt. Tao pinned another photo to the murder board, showing two containers on a locker shelf. "Neither of these two substances is actually classified as a chemical explosive, because they don't expand or release much gas or heat on their own, _but_," he turned around to face the rest of the team, "since persulfuric acid is a strong oxidizer that can contribute to the combustion of the acetone derivative we found in Donnell's locker, mixing the two together in sufficient quantities _could_ create a blast."

Sharon pressed a finger between her eyebrows; she was getting a tension headache. "So Donnell could've used the substances we found in his locker to carry out a bomb threat."

"Well…" Tao grimaced a little doubtfully, "yes, although the quantities we found wouldn't have done a _huge_ amount of damage. With the materials in these two containers, I'd say… maybe he could blast something the size of this room… maybe."

"So his target was a small place," concluded Flynn. "Great. _That_ should narrow it down."

"Or there are more explosives that we haven't found," Sharon pointed out worriedly. "I don't think we can draw any conclusions yet."

"There's also the possibility that he was planning to mix in another catalyst," Lt. Tao amended, "which _would_ amplify the amount and speed of the heat release, resulting in a bigger blast. But the bomb squad didn't find another substances in his locker – and with or without the extra catalyst, he'd still need some sort of mechanism to control when the compounds got mixed, which also wasn't there. We found the acid and the ketone in completely separate containers, and no other catalyst, so technically, we may not be able to qualify this as an 'explosive' under the current dangerous substances codes."

She didn't particularly care what they called it; she was more concerned about what it meant that they'd found the substances at all. "Where did the two chemicals come from? Are they available for general purchase? _Where_ did Donnell get them?"

"The acid is a component in a lot of industry cleaners," said Mike, "and acetone itself of course is available to buy online… although the compound we found in his locker was actually a derivative, like I said," he revised, "which doesn't have any common industry uses that I found so far, so…not sure where he got that. Of course, both substances are used in laboratories…"

Sharon gave a quick nod, understanding his point. "Let's ask the university if any of their research labs are missing supplies."

"Already did, Captain." Sykes was standing against Julio's desk. " We've asked everyone to take an inventory. So far no one's reported anything – but it's just nine a.m., we're still waiting to hear from most of the labs. "

"And are we _sure_ there's no indication in Donnell's financial records of having purchased any of these chemicals? What about his friends' records?"

Tao shook his head. "Nothing. None of them registered this kind of purchase to a credit card, and none of them made any significant cash withdrawals in the last three months that could account for this."

Andy crossed his arms, staring at the board. "Doesn't this Murray guy work at an industrial supply store? Could he have stolen the stuff from there?" He paused, frowned, "Is anyone else getting a déjà vu here?"

"It's more of a home and garden store," said Julio, "and they do carry two brands of cleaners that contain the acid, but they're stored in a different location than Murray works at. I checked, he doesn't have access to that storage, and none of the deliveries he's made in the past three months included either of the cleaners. And yes," he muttered darkly, "I remember that too, lieutenant."

Sharon glanced from one to the other, eyebrows arching in a questioning manner.

"Last time we had three kids thinking they can 'save' the world," Tao explained, "with bombs – among other things – it didn't go so well."

Understanding dawned in her expression. "The mall shootings from a few years ago." And with that, a stab of apprehension at the memory; between one suspect dying in custody, and the tragedy at the mall a day later, she hadn't slept for four days straight trying to clear everyone involved. It had been one of the most devastating incidents for the LAPD in the last decade – and that, even though the worst of it had been averted by Chief Johnson and the team. The loss of life could have been a hundred times worse.

"It's not the same thing, Ma'am," Sanchez opined. "I sent uniforms to supervise an inventory at all the store locations, nothing's missing. And we didn't find any weapons or anything at either of these guys' homes. Plus… Murray just doesn't seem like the type."

"When do they ever?" scoffed Flynn.

Julio stuck to his point of view. "This guy's just an idiot kid who likes to get high."

"That's certainly _consistent_ with everything we found at his house," Provenza agreed, "particularly his little public produce garden on the roof."

"What about the van?" Flynn retorted, and his partner gave a conceding sort of lopsided nod. "Murray had two cars in the garage," Andy recapped for the two detectives and Tao, who hadn't heard it yet, "his own '99 Volkswagen Cabrio, and a delivery minivan from his workplace. There was barely enough space for both of them in the garage, so we checked with his manager, who said delivery drivers aren't _supposed_ to drive the store cars home. So let me ask you," he arched his eyebrows at Sanchez, "if this guy isn't 'the type', what was he planning to do with the minivan?"

The detective thought for a second, then glanced at Sharon. "I think we should talk to Danny Murray again, Ma'am."

"I agree. In the meantime, let's keep trying to find out where the explosives might have come from," she requested of the rest of them, "and what Donnell might have been targeting. Please let me know of _any_ updates immediately…oh," she'd started heading for the door, but paused in her tracks and turned to Provenza, "Lieutenant. I think we should ask James Donnell's parents to come here, so I can notify them in person of their son's death. Would you mind…?"

"I'll call them," he agreed.

"Thank you. And…" Sharon sighed. "If Dr. Morales is done with the body, I don't see a reason not to release it to the young man's parents by the end of today. At the very least, they might ask to see it…" She glanced at the pictures on the murder board, showing Donnell's DMV picture, next to a far less presentable image of his body after the jump from the bridge. "Could you please ask Dr. Morales to see if he can…"

"Put Humpty-Dumpty together again?" Andy suggested, earning himself a wry look from the Captain, and a far more approving one from his partner.

"Thank you, Lt. Flynn," Sharon said dryly. "Why don't you help Lt. Tao go through Donnell's personal correspondence? I want to make _absolutely sure_ that there's nothing in there that we're overlooking."

She pointed illustratively to the recycling bin filled to the brim with fliers, ads, coupons and assorted envelopes. Andy's shoulders slumped.

"Oh, come on…"

* * *

"Okay… look, Jimmy asked me to get the minivan, okay?"

Danny Murray looked just as uneasy in the interview room as the two times before, if not more. There were dark circles under his eyes, and even as he admitted to having more information, he still looked hopelessly confused.

"Are you sure he's… you know…"

"Dead? Yeah." Sanchez was not showing the young man too much patience. "So you just took the delivery minivan from work, even though it's against the rules and could get you fired, just 'cause your stoner buddy told you to?"

"Yeah! Jimmy wouldn't ask if it wasn't important," Danny seemed to think that explained everything. "And he said we were gonna help people, and – but like, not to talk to anyone else about it. I wanted to help him out, okay?"

"Why didn't you tell us any of this _yesterday_!" demanded Julio.

"I didn't wanna get Jimmy in trouble, dude, okay?"

Sharon and Julio exchanged a brief glance; they'd already told him the night before that his friend was dead, but Danny was having some difficulties keeping the facts straight in his head – which wasn't entirely surprising, but it did slow down the interview process considerably. And _time_ was the last luxury they could afford at the moment. Not when James Donnell might have actually placed a bomb somewhere.

But when they tried again to impress that upon the young man, he only protested more. "No! He'd never do that, man. He'd never like, hurt people! Jimmy's … was… a good guy!"

Sharon clasped her fingers together, leaning forward slightly. "If he didn't want to hurt people, what were the explosives for?"

"I don't know, okay?" He swallowed uneasily. "I don't know about any explosives in his locker. He never told me anything about that."

The phrasing was particular enough to make her frown. "What about places other than his locker? Does he have more stored somewhere else?"

"I don't know!"

"Then _what_ did he _tell_ you!" Sanchez demanded, growing even more impatient. "Tell us the truth, Danny! Or do you want to go to prison? Is that what you want?"

But his threats only caused the young man to jump backwards in his seat, looking not so much ready to talk as ready to throw up in a panic. Sharon touched Julio's arm, a silent signal to dial it down for a moment, and she leaned forward again.

"Danny, you know more than you're saying," she stated calmly, "and because you're not being totally honest with me, people could be in danger. Do you think that's what Jimmy would want?"

His shoulders hunched dejectedly. "Jimmy wanted to help everyone, okay? He thought people were gonna get hurt."

"Hurt… hurt by what? _Danny_." She fixed him with a penetrating gaze. "How did Jimmy want to help? What did he need your minivan for? Where was he planning to go?"

But when his only response was a wary shrug, even Sharon could feel her patience thinning. She leaned back in her seat again, trying to figure out a better way to reach the young man. A few seconds later, a knock on the door drew her attention, and she glanced over to see Provenza sticking his head in.

"Captain." His voice was low. "There's something you need to hear."

After only the briefest deliberation, Sharon stood up. For the time being, admitting that 'Jimmy' had been planning _something_, for which he'd wanted the delivery minivan, was all that Danny seemed willing or able to share. It wasn't nearly enough to go on, of course, but she trusted that Julio could continue the interview just fine on his own while she attended to whatever Lt. Provenza had found.

With a quick glance signaling Sanchez to keep trying to get the details, she followed the lieutenant out of the interview room.

* * *

"One of the researchers at USC just called in". Provenza barely waited until the interview room door was closed before updating her. "Some chemistry lab, or geo-chemistry or… you'll have to ask Tao for the technically correct nomenclature," he rolled his eyes. "But the guy reported missing supplies from their lab – persulfuric acid and Tao's acetone derivative, specifically."

Her expression grew even more serious as she nodded. At least that answered the question of where Donnell had obtained the chemicals. "Anything else missing? Like the extra catalyst that Lt. Tao mentioned?" When Provenza shook his head, she felt a momentary relief. Maybe they'd found everything there was to be found. "What quantities did this researcher say were missing?"

The lieutenant arched his eyebrows. "That's the interesting news. They're missing more or less _exactly_ what we found in that locker."

_That_ news should've brought more relief. Instead, Sharon felt a vague sense of unease, though she couldn't put her finger on why. Possibly this case had just been so filled with uncertainties and contradictions from the start, that even good news was hard to digest. "So we found all the explosives that Donnell had stolen?"

"Maybe…" Provenza conceded, "or maybe he took some of the same from other labs. Make it harder to detect the theft. We're still waiting to hear from at least half of them."

She exhaled a displeased breath. It had been nearly two hours since Det. Sykes had notified the university that they needed all the research labs' supplies inventoried _urgently_. "Is there any way to accelerate the process? Maybe get in touch directly with the labs who are delaying this?" Especially now that they'd found evidence of one theft, it was even more imperative that they figure out if anything else was missing.

The lieutenant agreed, "I'll make some phone calls." And she thanked him with a silent dip of her head.

"I called Donnell's parents, too," Provenza said in a quieter voice. "They should be here this afternoon. I didn't tell them anything," he warned, "but… you know how it goes. They got pretty agitated anyway."

And for good reason, they both knew. It wasn't for nothing that the LAPD was calling at nine a.m. on a Monday, let alone asking Mr. and Mrs. Donnell to drive down two hours without giving them any details. They'd have called their son right away, Sharon was sure. It's what she would have done. They'd probably _keep_ calling him, their panic growing each time he didn't answer, right up until they walked into her office.

What would be going through their minds, then? What would her notification wreak on their lives?

It was hard to imagine.

Sharon sighed. "Thank you, lieutenant." She made a motion to head back into the interview room, but…

"Captain!"

Her hand paused half-way to the doorknob.

"I was just coming to look for you," said Lt. Tao. "Flynn and I may have found something."

* * *

"No, Ma'am, I'm afraid that's not possible at the mome – yes, I'll pass that on. No, I'm afraid I can't give you any more details at this time…" Amy rolled her eyes, letting out an exasperated sigh into her phone. "I understand, but that's not up to me. No – if the dean calls, I'll only tell _him_ the same thing…"

Having followed Lt. Tao back to the murder room, Sharon was about to ask who Sykes was talking to, when her focus was diverted by Flynn's call:

"Captain – take a look at this."

Her eyebrows arched slightly as she accepted the object that he'd handed her. She turned it over in her hands a couple of times, studying it with as much attention as she could, but after a few seconds of seeing nothing out of the ordinary about it, she decided to admit to her confusion:

"A flier for a new shopping center opening in Compton…? What about this caught your eye, Andy?" She opened the little pamphlet again, unfolding it to read the list of stores and facilities, but other than a gaudy color scheme that hurt her eyes, the advertisement seemed completely unremarkable.

"We found it on the guy's coffee table. Look – the only other things on there were two organic pizza menus and some tutorial on how to recycle stuff." He pointed to the bin they'd brought back from Donnell's house. "Everything else was in there, even his real mail, after he read it he tossed it into recycling."

She still couldn't see where he was going with it, and the uncertainty must've shown on her face, because Lt. Tao chimed in to explain further:

"His phone records and debit card transactions show he ordered from both pizza places frequently, at least once or twice a week –"

Sharon remembered that much; she'd studied the records the previous day, and had noticed that he mostly seemed to call his parents, the utilities company and local delivery places.

" – which explains why the menus were on his coffee table. He must've used them a lot, so he didn't throw them out," finished Tao.

"As for the recycling brochure," Andy picked up the explanation again, "when we talked to his neighbours at least two of them mentioned that he constantly reminded them about how to do it, and even gave them copies of the brochure."

This time, she thought she could see their point. Dipping her chin, she frowned thoughtfully: "So he used the menus and the recycling leaflet regularly... but why," she murmured, "would he hang on to the shopping center flier?" A renewed sense of urgency began to bloom as she followed the logic through. "Lt. Tao – did Donnell mention this new mall in any of his blog entries?"

"Not by name, no – but, there are a couple of entries on shopping centers in general, and he googled this particular one over a dozen times in the last couple of months."

Her mind was already racing back to all the other clues they had. As Lt. Provenza had said, it was possible that they'd already found all the explosives that Donnell had ever (_maybe_) intended to use, but what if… "What does his blog have to say about shopping centers?"

Mike turned his computer screen, showing her two pages next to one another. "He's criticizing how commercial areas are expanding into what's supposed to be residential or green space," he summarized, "how their impact on low-income neighborhoods is actually negative… and he generally argues that they create a financial and social burden by trapping people's funds and limiting the range of their interests and community activities."

Sharon closed her eyes briefly. She was torn between the impulse to rush to action, and the need to know more and make sure this wasn't a false alarm. "Do those entries use any of the buzzwords from his speech on the bridge?"

When Tao grimaced, she knew his answer before he said it:

"Uh, most of them, actually. Or at least the ideas, if not the exact words. Context-driven social pressure, impulse control problems," he glanced at the screen again, "the suggestion that the city should reduce the commercial pressure and get rid of some of the shopping malls or turn them into local community centers instead…"

She glanced at the flier again. "This just opened yesterday." The morning right after Donnell had made his bomb threats and jumped off the bridge. Oh god…

"Yup, a big Sunday launch. Discounts and coupons at most of the stores, free ice cream sundaes and live music… Kathy actually considered going to check it out when we caught the case and I had to cancel plans to visit her brother." Lt. Tao looked a little uneasy at the thought, a feeling Sharon could absolutely empathize with.

"But the opening went well. There were no problems."

"No one reported anything, no," Flynn confirmed. "But…"

But, that didn't mean that Donnell hadn't placed a bomb at the mall anyway. He may not have had time to detonate it, but if there were explosives sitting there somewhere, anyone could stumble across them and…

Her eyes darted to the wall clock. "What time does the mall open?"

The two lieutenants looked equally grim.

"Ten," said Andy. "That's why we pulled you out of the interview."

Her heart picked up again; the clock read nine forty-five. "Call the bomb squad, tell them we have a possible new location. And call the mall and tell them to _delay the opening time_ today and clear out all the employees already there," she instructed in a clip tone. "I'm going to try to get confirmation on this, but be ready to move ahead anyway."

With that, she grabbed the flier from Tao's desk, and all but dashed back into the hallway, to the interview room. Danny Murray looked startled at her hasty entrance, and even Det. Sanchez gave her a slightly questioning glance, but there was no time for explanations.

Sharon place the flier down in front of Danny.

"Is this where Jimmy was planning to go?"

The slight widening of his eyes and the way his shoulders hunched even further was answer enough.

* * *

**I know Rusty was MIA for this chapter (a first for me! did we even know I could do that?!), but don't worry, he'll be back in all his teenage angsty splendor in the next one. In the meantime, thank you all for your continued encouragement - hearing that you're enjoying the case has been fantastic, as you know it's my first effort in the 'crime' direction, and very much out of my comfort zone! I'm very grateful for your feedback :).  
**


	10. Answers

**Thank you all for your comments :). **

**Guys this is the Longest Chapter Ever. That's what happens when I don't update for twelve days, I guess? Speaking of twelve days, maybe get your Christmas shopping done, because it might be December by the time this chapter ends. **

**A Tangled Web (10)**

No day that included a media circus before noon could be a good day.

" – construction crew, saying that they need the last of their equipment from the back parking lot –"

"And they can _get_ it, as soon as we're done sweeping the place." Provenza pulled the rim of his white hat lower over his eyes, and waved a hand to the officer beside him. "We're keeping _everyone_ out, what do they need, signs posted around here?"

Half a dozen uniformed policemen kept the crowd in check outside the yellow tape and roadblocks. Mall employees, frustrated would-be shoppers and curious stragglers alike had amassed in a wide circle around the evacuated shopping center; a handful of reporters and photographers from local tabloids were already snapping pictures. Sirens from half a dozen parked police cars flashed silently on the fringes of the perimeter.

"Tell them to go get lunch and come back when we're done," Provenza finished. Turning back to the Captain, he rolled his eyes: "Who ever heard of a construction crew in a _hurry_ to get to their next job?"

Sharon's only response was a vague hum, her thoughts having been momentarily distracted by his mention of lunch. With the day they were having, she'd skipped breakfast, and the one overly sweetened cup of coffee she'd had had definitely worn off by now. She reached for one of the water bottles on the dinky plastic table.

"Bomb squad just finished sweeping the second floor, Ma'am." Sanchez was walking over to the command tent, a crackling radio in his hands. "They didn't find anything there, either. They're moving on to the food court areas and the roof terrace, next –"

"Of course they didn't find anything, I told you!" An irate voice erupted a few yards away, cutting him off. "Do you have any idea how much all of this is costing me? This is ridiculous! I bet it's a scheme by those assholes over at City…"

Provenza met the Captain's eyes with a wry look, and held out a hand in the direction of the speaker: a tall, well-built woman who may have been in her late thirties or early forties. Her chin-length hair was a deep burgundy color that could've only come from a bottle, and she wore a power suit and high-heeled shoes pointy enough to be used as weapons.

"Captain Raydor, meet Susan Crowley, owner and manager of 'Sun Plaza'," said Provenza. "Better you than me," he added in a low voice meant for Sharon's ears only. "She's been making a scandal and getting in everyone's way, and if I have to hear it for much longer _I_ might explode. Mrs. Crowley – Captain Sharon Raydor," he finished in a louder tone.

"It's Ms. Crowley," the tall woman corrected, "I'm divorced."

"I'm surprised," the lieutenant muttered, but she didn't seem to hear his comment as she zeroed in on Sharon:

"Captain – finally! I assume you're in charge here, then?" She didn't even wait for a reply before demanding: "You have to tell your…your_ bomb squad_ to hurry up! And then I want a public statement that says this was all some big LAPD screw-up and that my shopping center is perfectly in order –"

" –_can't go anywhere without our machines, what, are you not gettin' English or somethin'?_" A dozen yards away, a man in a bright orange vest and a construction hat was arguing with a flushed Lt. Flynn, their voices loud enough to drown out even the indignant mall owner.

"Hey pal," the lieutenant roared back, "which part of 'bomb threat' are _you_ not getting? Get the hell back on the other side of the yellow line until we finish clearing the whole place!"

The telltale click of cameras sprang to life from behind said yellow line, along with a few amused heckles.

The noon heat and tense atmosphere were definitely getting to everyone.

"Ms. Crowley." Ignoring the surrounding chaos, Sharon adopted her most diplomatic smile. With a couple of steps to the side, she effectively prevented the other woman from entering the command tent, where she didn't belong, anyway. "I understand that this is causing you some inconvenience, but –"

"Inconvenience? It's only our second day of operation, and you're shutting us down because of a _bomb threat_?" Susan Crowley threw her perfectly manicured hands up in the air. "Do you have any idea what that's going to do to my business? I make a commitment to the stores I lease to, and I can't afford to have this kind of bad publicity _one day_ after opening! Oh, and this is just going to _kill_ Saturday's St. Patrick's day celebration," she muttered angrily, "we'll never hit the estimated four thousand shoppers now…"

"Having a bomb go off while your shopping center is in business would make for even worse publicity," Sharon pointed out, "wouldn't you agree?"

"There is no bomb! I'm telling you – trace whoever called in the threat! I'll bet you that it's those jerks at City!"

It was the second time she mentioned the name; Sharon gave Provenza a questioning glance, to which he only shook his head. "Citadel Outlets," he clarified. "Another mall about fifteen minutes away. Apparently there's such a thing as mall rivalry," he added dryly.

"They're trying to sabotage me because they know I'll get all their business," Ms. Crowley continued, all indignation. "Their goddamn manager has been after me ever since I convinced a couple of their hotter stores move over to us instead. It's not 'poaching' when I can give them a better location, better exposure, lower rent –"

Privately, Sharon didn't see how 'Sun Plaza' could offer a better location or better exposure to anything, given that it was somewhat on the fringes of its neighborhood, close to a particularly poorly kept part of the LA river and surrounded mostly by concrete lots and a large field grown half-wild with weeds. If _she'd_ been trying to build a successful shopping center, she wouldn't have picked that spot… but then again, she wasn't a businesswoman. And Susan Crowley at least _looked_ like she was prospering, so maybe she knew what she was doing.

In any case, that was largely irrelevant at the moment.

"Ms. Crowley," Sharon tried again. "I assure you we're proceeding as fast as possible, and doing everything we can to ensure the safety of your shoppers. The best thing you can do right now is to cooperate with us and be patient."

"Okay, I don't know if you're using the public institution definition of 'as fast as possible'," the other woman retorted, "but it's been two hours since you evacuated everyone, and nothing's resolved yet! And you just keep bringing in _more_ police! Can't you at least make them… I don't know, less visible or something?!"

Another long-suffering look from Provenza, who had obviously been through much of the same spiel with the irritated businesswoman.

"I told your people fifty times that there's no bomb!" Susan Crowley railed on. "There's nothing wrong with the building and I don't need dogs and cops sniffing through every corner! You didn't even show me a warrant! What gives you the right to disrupt my business like this?"

"We don't need a warrant when there is a demonstrated risk to public safety," Sharon explained succinctly. "_If_ there is no bomb, then we should be out of here as soon as we've confirmed that," (her tone dropped a few notes) "and _no sooner_." Her affable smile was accompanied by a no-nonsense glint in her eyes, as she signalled one of the uniformed officers over with a quick hand gesture. "In the meantime, please wait outside the perimeter, in the designated safe zone, along with the rest of your employees."

Responding to her signal, the officer presented himself at Ms. Crowley's right shoulder in seconds, ready to escort her off the premises; the woman had to allow herself to be led away eventually, her pointy shoes clicking angrily on the sidewalk as she tossed impatient glares back over her shoulder and muttered warnings that included the words 'lawyer' and 'financial damages'.

Sharon sighed.

"Reminds me of ex number two," murmured Provenza.

"Isn't that the one you married twice, Sir?" Sanchez arched his eyebrows pointedly.

"_Divorced_ twice."

* * *

"Bomb squad just got the parking garage cleared." Lt. Flynn joined them in the command tent, followed by Det. Sykes. "Let the dogs run through twice and came up empty. They're sweeping employee parking next... but I'm gonna be honest here, I don't think we're gonna find anything."

Sykes nodded in agreement. "If our guy had actually gotten around to placing a bomb, he would've put it inside the actual building, where it could do the most damage."

"They're still searching the food court and the roof," Sharon reminded them. Although she privately agreed that after a two hour fruitless search it was looking unlikely that they'd find anything, she wasn't planning to relax until every last corner of the shopping center had been checked.

"Yeah, but I still say we're in the clear," Andy opined. "Looks to me like if that little creep actually meant to blow up the mall, he didn't get to carry out his plan."

Again Sykes agreed. "I just heard back from the last lab at USC," she added, "no one else reported any missing supplies. Looks like the explosives we found in Donnell's locker were all there was." She gave a half-shrug of sorts. "Maybe he was planning to plant those, but he OD'ed on the frog venom and jumped off the bridge before he got a chance to figure out how do it."

"Guess he shouldn't have tried to celebrate before getting the job done," muttered Flynn.

Sharon watched two of the bomb squad members walk out a side exit at a relaxed pace, followed by a police dog. They waved the "all-clear" signal for whatever section of the mall they'd been sweeping.

She had to admit, all evidence was pointing to the same conclusion. Whatever James Donnell had intended to do, it seemed that he hadn't gone through with it. Had he changed his mind? Had he really just celebrated too early, as Lt. Flynn suggested? Or perhaps he'd never even had a fully formed plan because he just wasn't 'the type', as Det. Sanchez had put it.

It could be that they'd never know for sure.

Outside the police tape, the curious crowd was finally beginning to thin out after two hours of nothing happening, the heat and their own daily errands driving people away. Sharon couldn't blame them. She'd have loved to be out of the sun, herself: it was a little warm for mid-March, and the blazer she'd hastily thrown on at six a.m. that morning wasn't the most weather appropriate.

Of course, at six a.m. she hadn't anticipated spending two hours outdoors in the half-deserted, weed-infested riverside area, waiting to see if the dead man in the morgue had planted explosives in the middle of a shopping mall.

Even when the bomb squad lieutenant confirmed that the mall was clear, a small part of her was left wondering.

It was nothing she could put her finger on, not really. But there was _something_ about the whole thing that was bothering her…

"Captain." The grave note in Provenza's quiet voice made her instantly wary; when she glanced up, there was a hint of sadness in his gaze. He held up his phone: "That was Tao. James Donnell's parents just arrived at the police building. They're asking about their son…"

Sharon averted her eyes for a brief moment. In the agitation of the last few hours, she hadn't had the chance to think about the notification. She wasn't ready to give those parents the news, she needed time to figure out what to say … but every minute she made them wait was an unnecessary cruelty.

She nodded. "Alright. Lieutenant, if you don't mind wrapping up here, I'll head back downtown now and meet Mr. and Mrs. Donnell."

"I'll come, too," Flynn offered. He shrugged at her slightly questioning look. "It doesn't take all four of us to finish here. I can help with the notification. Plus," he gave a crooked nod in the direction of his partner, "this way I don't have to listen to his radio station the whole way back."

Provenza grumbled some indistinct protest in reply, but Sharon just acknowledged the offer with a grateful smile.

* * *

" –end up being a killer. You know, for whatever that's worth…"

Wrapped in her own thoughts, it took Sharon a second to realize that she hadn't followed most of what Andy had just said. "…What?"

From the corner of her eye she saw the man give her a brief look, but he didn't miss a beat: "I was saying," he repeated, "that at least that kid's parents won't have to live with knowing he blew up a bunch of innocent people. Not much consolation… but at least he won't be labeled a killer."

She kept her eyes resolutely on the road; a few moments passed in silence. "It _isn't_ much consolation," she agreed in a soft voice, "I don't imagine."

Andy conceded the point with a brief lopsided nod. "Yeah... guess nothing really is, for this kind of thing," he said in a quiet tone, and Sharon sighed.

They drove for another minute or so in pensive silence, before he turned his head to her again.

"Hey, I didn't get to say it yesterday with all the running around, but – thanks again. You know, for the brunch thing. I really owe you one there," he told her earnestly.

A small smile graced her lips. "I'm glad you could go. I hope Nicole and family are doing well?"

"They're all great. Everyone wanted me to say hello, give you their best." Andy pondered for a second whether to also convey the invitation they'd extended to her for the next brunch. Provenza's loudly protesting voice in his head won out, and he stayed silent.

With the delicate topic of his family's notions about Sharon off the table, he tried to think of something else to say that wasn't related to the case; she looked like she could use the distraction.

"So how are things at home with you?" Wait, did that sound too nosy? "You know, with the kid and stuff I mean – not _you_, you." Wait, that didn't sound right either. "I mean – with you, _too_..."

Sharon gave him a funny sideways glance.

The lieutenant cleared his throat. "How's Rusty?" he rephrased with as much dignity as he could recover. "Don't catch him around the murder room much these days. Guess he's enjoying his freedom…?"

But that had somehow been the wrong thing to say, because her expression went from being slightly sad to closing up entirely. For a moment, Andy didn't know what to make of it, or how to react.

"Everything okay? He's not in trouble, is he?"

Sharon shook her head. "No. No, he's fine," she assured. "Caught up on his classes. Reconnected with friends at school. He's back on the chess team…" A hint of a smile played on her lips, though there was still a note of wistfulness to it. "He's doing well. Thank you for asking."

"Okay… good." He wasn't sure what else to say, mostly because he wasn't sure what was causing her to react like that in the first place. He'd just seen the kid the day before, and granted, it had been for a grand total of about three minutes but he'd _looked_ fine, delivering everyone's lunch, and he and Sharon had acted totally normal… "You know that if you two are having any problems, you can count on me, right?"

That elicited another vague smile from her. "I appreciate that Andy, thank you."

Right. "Yeah…I mean, I owe you about five hundred favors, so really it's just…" He couldn't think of a single good word. "…Math."

She gave him another bemused glance from the corner of her eye, and he couldn't blame her, because 'math'? Really?

It was probably a good thing that she pulled into the garage of the police administration building soon after that, and there was no more time for conversation.

* * *

It was this conversation that Sharon would never get used to.

Even after nearly two years in Major Crimes, and having seen more deaths than she could count, talking to the families never got easier. It was the one thing, the _one thing_ about moving from internal affairs to solving murders, that she hadn't managed to learn her way around. The one aspect she hated about a job she loved.

And she really did hate it, dreaded it, and too often there was no way around it. And it never. got. easier.

Most of her team were more experienced with this, and after letting her struggle through it for the first couple of months, they'd begun to occasionally volunteer to notify the families. Sometimes, she let them – if it made sense for the case, usually, on which occasions the victims' next of kin were either not too surprised at the news, or not too heartbroken, and then the whole thing was sad for an entirely different set of reasons.

Most times, though, she forced herself to be part of the notification, because at the end of the day, she had a responsibility to the family as much as to the victim, and knowing that she'd fulfilled that responsibility was one of the more _rewarding_ parts of her job.

She still dreaded those conversations.

And when it came to notifying parents that their children were dead, that dread seeped through her down to her bones.

"Are you sure? It - it - it can't…" James Donnell's mother Sylvia huddled against her husband in the dimly lit elevator, her entire frame shaking. "Are you sure it's not some - some mistake?"

It was the tenth time she'd asked, and each time Sharon wished she'd been able to give her a different answer.

Whatever she said, though, wouldn't fully break through to the young man's parents. Even after seeing his body they wouldn't fully grasp it; right now, they clung on to whatever desperate hope they could, that somehow this was all some terrible misunderstanding, because their son couldn't be dead, because that just didn't make any sense…

"Jimmy never did drugs…"

The conviction in the woman's voice was heartrending. The way she held so fervently onto the image she had of her son.

What had Chief Taylor called it, once? 'The fiction parents fall back on'.

Sharon swallowed hard against the knot in her throat.

"W-we just talked to him Friday…" Mrs. Donnell's voice broke, and she cast a supplicating look to her husband, who nodded stoically to confirm her words.

"Jimmy's a good boy," he said quietly, and his wife only sobbed harder.

"He's doing just fine… I don't understand…"

The old elevator jolted to a stop, and when the doors opened the temperature dropped considerably. Mrs. Donnell let out another strangled sob at the desolate sight of the grey walls in the morgue area.

Dr. Morales was waiting for them in the corridor, his expression entirely devoid of its usual note of sarcasm. He nodded imperceptibly to Sharon to indicate that he'd done his best to make the young man's body look more presentable, then he led the shaken couple down the hall. The Captain and Lt. Flynn followed in silence, a few steps behind; when the ME let the Donnells into the actual autopsy room, they stopped outside to give the bereaved parents the privacy they needed.

The walls weren't thick enough to block out the keening sounds of grief from James' mother.

Sharon sighed, unconsciously rubbing her arms to fight the icy chill running down her spine. A few moments later, Dr. Morales left the room as well, closing the door behind him with deliberate slowness. He wore a grim expression as he joined them.

"Those poor people. I can't even imagine…"

Sharon lowered her chin, a quiet agreement.

"They never believe it," Morales remarked somberly. "You know? Even when they see the body." He shook his head. "They asked me again about cause of death. What did you tell them?"

"Accident," Flynn supplied when the Captain remained quiet. "Drug overdose caused him to step off the bridge."

The doctor sighed. "Close enough, I suppose. None of the unnecessary depressing details." He shook his head again. "What about the whole bomb thing?"

"They didn't know anything about that. Didn't buy that he'd do it, their son wasn't like that, there must be some mistake…" Andy pursed his lips in a humorless grimace. "The usual."

"Yeah… well," Morales shrugged, "you didn't find a bomb at the mall, so maybe he _wasn't_ planning to do it."

The lieutenant scoffed doubtfully. "Yeah, and those stolen explosives in his locker were for a home improvement project. Plus," he pointed out, arching his eyebrows, "his idiot buddy basically _told_ us that Donnell was planning to blow up the mall."

"He also said that 'Jimmy' wouldn't hurt anyone," Sharon added in a quiet tone. She was still rubbing a little absently at her arms.

"What, you think he _wasn't_ going to plant those explosives at 'Sun Plaza'?" Andy sounded a little surprised at her comment. "He even asked Danny to borrow the delivery minivan from work. Plus we've got him pretty much admitting to his intentions, right before he jumped…"

She conceded both points with a wordless nod. He was right – they had ample evidence that James Donnell had planned to be at that mall on Saturday night, and between the traces of explosives on his hands, what they'd found in his locker, and his own intoxicated rant, it was clear that he'd meant to plant a bomb, too. He might even have intended to ask for his friends' help, if he'd actually gotten to meet them that night.

But he'd done none of it, because just hours before he would've presumably gone through with his plan, he'd instead accidentally exposed himself to a fatal dose of tree frog poison, and in the throes of a hallucination, jumped off the Sixth Street bridge – at the same time leaving behind a convoluted trail that Major Crimes had spent two chaotic days piecing back together.

Now she was left trying to explain all of it to his grieving parents. To his mother, who thought her loving son could do no wrong. To his father, who swore they'd raised Jimmy to be a good person. Sharon couldn't blame them for not being able to accept her patchwork story of their son's life. No matter what, they'd always wonder what had happened, how things had gone wrong, what they could've done. Above all, they'd always wonder _why_.

It was the first word out of Sylvia Donnell's mouth when she and her husband finally found their way back out into the corridor. Just that. Just 'why', in a heartbroken sob, her red eyes searching Sharon's, desperate for an answer.

"Our son never hurt anyone," was all Mr. Donnell said.

And that much was true. For all he'd had planned, James Donnell hadn't actually gotten around to hurting anyone. Anyone but himself.

But '_why'_?

Sharon couldn't answer that for them. No one could.

* * *

"I want to talk to Donnell's friends again," Sharon said the second she walked back into the murder room. Something in her tone must've been off; Provenza glanced up from his desk with a searching expression.

"Oh?"

"I just have a few more questions."

He lowered the page he'd been reading. "Captain's prerogative," he conceded, before adding, "but I'd like it noted on record that if I have to wake up at six a.m. for the _third day in a row_ tomorrow," (he pulled a displeased grimace) "I'm filing a protest with the union."

She dipped her head, a hint of a smile on her lips. "Consider it noted, Lieutenant. Mike – do we still have Danny and Diego in the interview rooms?"

"We do, Buzz has been keeping an eye on them from electronics. But, uh – there's a small problem…"

Of course there was. "What's wrong?"

"Well, it turns out that Diego still lives with his parents," Tao provided, "so when Flynn and Provenza executed the search warrant on his house this morning, someone must've called his dad to let him know, and…"

The end to that story presented itself with impeccable timing, in the form of a middle-aged, well-dressed man who marched into the murder room with a thundering scowl. " –no right to question my son without a lawyer present! Let me just say, Chief Taylor, that the Mayor will be hearing about this…"

"Captain Raydor." An irritated-looking Taylor had followed the man in, and he stepped forward to make the introductions: "This is Roberto Rojas… I understand you brought his son in to help with your ongoing case?"

It was not a good sign that the man's name elicited some vague sense of recognition. Between that, the look on the Chief's face and the casual dropping of the Mayor's name, it wasn't hard to infer that Roberto Rojas was someone who required tiptoeing around. And using overly diplomatic language such as 'help with the case'.

Well, after being woken up at six a.m. and spending the intervening hours chasing down a potential bomb around three different public sites, while trying to read the mind of a dead man, her resources of diplomacy were running a little low.

"We had some questions to ask Diego, yes," she confirmed, managing a neutral tone despite her growing sense of annoyance.

"You had no right to ask him _any_ questions without his lawyer! And why wasn't I informed of this immediately?" the man demanded. "Do I need to teach you how to do your jobs?"

Sharon's eyebrows arched pointedly.

It was probably for the best that Taylor decided to wisely cut in before further words were spoken.

"Captain, can we talk for a moment in your office? If you don't mind waiting, Roberto," he said to the man in a honeyed voice, "this will only be a minute, and then I'm convinced we can resolve things to everyone's satisfaction."

Privately, Sharon did not share the Chief's conviction.

* * *

"Captain..." It was a small consolation that he looked as hassled as she felt. "When I gave your division this case on Saturday, I wanted you to make sure that there won't _be_ any public incident –" he gave her a wry look, " – not to go ahead and _create_ one."

"To my understanding Chief, you gave us this case to make sure there was no threat to public safety," Sharon returned, "and _that_ is exactly what we're doing."

Taylor sighed. "Yes, Captain, I get it...and I'm not saying your team did anything wrong here, but not only did you deploy the bomb squad to three different sites in the last six hours – do you have any idea what that's costing us, by the way?"

Did _he_ have any idea what working at five a.m. on a Sunday had cost _them_?

" –but I've also had two deans from USC call me already complaining about the disruption and the bad publicity to their university," the Chief groaned, "the owner of the shopping center is accusing us of trying to sabotage her business… and now one of the Mayor's friends thinks we're violating his son's civil rights!"

"Diego Rojas is twenty-four years old," Sharon pointed out, "legally, an adult, and as such we have no obligation to inform his father of anything. He's not under arrest, and since we didn't find anything at his house, as soon as he's done answering my questions he'll be free to go."

Another sigh. "What questions? Didn't you already establish how his friend died?"

"We did," she had to acknowledge, "but –"

"And didn't you already find all the missing chemical supplies in that locker? Checked the mall and the aqueduct and the USC research facilities? Confirmed that the bomb threat was not realized? Captain…"

"I still have questions about what happened to James Donnell the night he died," she said. "We don't know what he was doing at the Sixth Street bridge, for one."

"He was high out of his mind," Taylor made a dismissive gesture, "I'm not sure _he_ could've told you why he was there."

"We don't know how he got there, either. He didn't own a car and we didn't find his bike at the scene."

"He could've walked."

Sharon exhaled a brief displeased breath. "It's just not clear to me, Chief, _why_ Donnell would've chosen to place a bomb at the mall in the first place."

"You saw his blog entries on the negative effects of shopping centers. 'Sun Plaza' was just about to open… he thought it a good time to make a statement against an 'overly mercantile society'..." The Chief shook his head. "That sounds like enough motive to me."

"But hurting all those people goes completely against his established character –"

"You're only basing that on the testimony of his best friend and his parents," he returned patiently. "Hardly objective sources, either of them. Look, Captain…Sharon…" Taylor's voice took on an almost compassionate note, which she might have appreciated, had she not recognized it as a persuasion method. "I understand that you're… sympathetic, to the plight of this young man's parents. But their tragedy doesn't make a case for Major Crimes."

"You _told_ us to look into his death," she reminded him.

"And now I'm telling you to close it." The understanding note in his voice was gone. "Unless you have new evidence that I haven't heard of, this case is over, Captain. Please release Diego Rojas and his friend."

"We have Danny Murray on charges of possession," she argued. "He was growing marijuana on his roof!"

"Then arrest him and pass him on to Narcotics," Taylor returned. "Either way, Major Crimes' involvement in this case is done."

"Chief –"

"Captain." He gave her a warning look, then sighed at her expression. "Do you genuinely believe that there's any chance that Donnell may have placed a bomb somewhere else?"

Sharon paused for a moment, then had to admit, "No."

"Or that he may have been working with a radical group, or in _any other way_ still pose a threat to public safety even after his death?"

Another pause. "No."

"Is there _any_ reason why you'd like to keep this investigation open – other than to give that young man's parents more answers?"

This time, she frowned. "Yes. _I_ want more answers, Chief," she said firmly. "Give me until the end of the day. Please. I just want to wrap up a few things, and talk to Donnell's two friends again."

Taylor's lips pursed in displeasure. "Roberto Rojas is one of the Mayor's _good_ friends," he emphasized for her benefit, "and his brother in law is on the Board of Commissioners. Captain, this is not a man we want to cross for no reason."

Just the idea of having to do the politics dance at the moment made Sharon want to shoot someone. Maybe it was the low blood sugar making her irritable.

"I'll be careful," she promised eventually. "Diego's father can observe the interview from electronics. And then we'll let his son go home."

Taylor gave her another dark look. "Be _very_ careful," he requested.

* * *

Unfortunately, Sharon's satisfaction from winning her argument was short-lived; interviewing Diego Rojas didn't give her any more useful information. He didn't know why Jimmy would've wanted to blow up a mall. Jimmy hadn't asked for his help in doing so. He didn't remember what they'd talked about in relation to shopping centers. Jimmy was a chill dude.

Were they going to get him a proper lunch?

Sharon pinched the bridge of her nose. She had the distinct impression that the young man wasn't being intentionally uncooperative (not that he was going out of his way to help her, either, but it didn't seem that he was holding anything back maliciously), but she may have been missing the right line of questions. Much as she tried, however, she couldn't think of anything other relevant things to ask.

"Did you, Jimmy and Danny spend a lot of time around the Sixth Street Bridge?"

He looked at her like she was speaking Greek. "What? Why would we hang around _there_?"

"That's where Jimmy was on the night he died," she said tiredly; she was pretty sure she'd told him that before. "Do you have any idea why he might've gone there?"

Diego thought for a second, making her hope for a good answer.

"Nope."

Her breath came out sounding more exasperated than she'd intended. Julio gave her a sympathetic glance.

"Hey can I like, go to the bathroom?"

* * *

Their third time talking with Danny didn't go much better. The young man mainly repeated what he'd told them before, insisting once again that 'Jimmy' was only trying to help. Clearly, he'd bought into his friend's 'Zero Footprint' ideas a little more than Diego (whose interests in the friendship seemed to lie more along the direction of exotic psychoactive substances and weed), but he was also proportionally less articulate than the latter, as such making for an equally uninformative conversation.

" –don't remember why he was at the bridge…like, maybe something to do with water…?"

Sharon's tension headache was coming back.

"Alright… Danny, you said Jimmy wanted to help people…?"

He looked almost happy to confirm: "Yeah! He was like, real into that stuff. Wanted to make the city better..."

"Okay, then can you tell me _why_ Jimmy would think that planting explosives at the mall would help people?"

He scratched his ear. "Uh, I don't know…"

"_Think_." God. "Do you remember him telling you anything about that?"

"Uh… maybe? I don't know, okay? Jimmy talked about all sorts of stuff… maybe Diego remembers…?"

If only.

"I think it had something to do with like, melting things…?"

Sharon and Julio exchanged a glance. That was something new.

Danny leaned against the back of his chair, until he was balancing it on the two back legs; it reminded Sharon of something Ricky used to do, and she couldn't help admonishing the young man to sit in the chair properly. Danny and Julio both gave her funny looks, at that.

"What did Jimmy say?" she repeated. "What about melting things?"

"Uh, maybe it was like… melting rocks…? No, wait… actually, I think maybe I thought the couch was melting… it was from the frog thing, you know? Man… that was some good stuff."

Sharon was losing her patience. "Danny, Jimmy's parents are here, and they want to know what happened to their son. You can help me tell them the whole story. _Think_."

He stared at her, disbelieving. "Oh, man… you told his _parents_?"

* * *

"You look like you could use a coffee, Ma'am."

At this point, she could have probably used something a little stronger. Like rocket fuel.

Julio made sure the interview room was properly closed, before following her down the corridor. "Should I notify Narcotics about Danny?"

But Sharon shook her head. "He's got no prior arrests, he has a marijuana card and we can't prove intent to sell or distribute what he was growing on his roof." She gave the detective a tired look. "He probably _didn't_ mean to distribute it. Let's just get him an attorney and work out some sort of deal that involves our right to bring him back for questioning, if necessary."

"I'll get on that, Ma'am."

They ran into Diego and his father right outside the murder room; Chief Taylor was just making his last assurances that the young man was a great help and in no trouble whatsoever, while Mr. Rojas looked on with a stony glare. Diego gave an unsure sort of handwave to Sharon and Julio as they walked by.

Lt. Flynn had the Donnells in the conference room, going over the paperwork necessary to release their son's body to them. Sharon found herself unable to tear her gaze away; a pang of unease ran through her at the thought that she'd failed to get them any more answers. But the truth was, there may not have been more answers to be had. Maybe Taylor was right; maybe she was looking too hard into the whole thing…

" –my regards to the Mayor, will you?"

The Chief's voice still drifted to her from the doorway; she glanced back over to catch one last glimpse of Diego and his father. The sudden parallel struck her, then. Roberto Rojas, marching his son to the elevator, while only a dozen yards away James Donnell's parents were signing the documents that would get them their child's body. An vague sort of sorrow coiled briefly in Sharon's stomach; there was something tremendously sad about the contrast.

Her phone buzzed in the pocket of her blazer. For a second, seeing Rusty's name at the top of the text message notification only added a new layer to her momentary anxieties. But she knew that everything was fine; it was just past three p.m., and he was texting to let her know he was home. She typed back a quick reply promising a home-made dinner later, and put the phone away.

Provenza had pulled down two of the pictures from the murder board and put them into a folder. He reached for the third…

"Leave it."

The lieutenant turned to give her a silent look, eyebrows arching questioningly.

Sharon sighed. "Until we get a new case," she amended. "Leave this one up."

The request didn't really make any sense, but to her surprise Provenza didn't comment, putting the folder back on his desk instead. Her eyes wandered over the details on the murder board. The photos of the bridge scene and Donnell's DMV photo; the words "Zero Footprint" and Provenza's stylized frog drawing; the USC logo and the photo of the explosives from the locker, and the gleaming pamphlet advertising the grand 'Sun Plaza' opening. Together, they told a sad story.

She glanced over to the conference room again; Mrs. Donnell was leaning into her husband's shoulder, crying.

Sharon shook her head, her lips pressing together in painful empathy for the couple.

* * *

**Apologies again for the gargantuan length of this chapter. ****Please don't send me your optometrist bill! (but do send me your thoughts!)**

**I know all the things happened and we didn't even get to properly see Rusty – but to quote another famous fictional employee of our justice system, 'I have a point, I promise!'. All this was necessary to advance the plot ;). Next time, we'll be back to more normal word counts and Sharon will finally get to go home. We'll also be getting a guest appearance from everyone's favorite DDA! Or maybe from Emma :D. It's still a little undecided. **

**Thank you for reading :)! **


	11. Tangled

**Thanks for all your wonderful comments :) they always make me think more in depth about what I'm writing, AND they brighten my day! (which considering the ridiculous April snows we've been getting, is particularly desirable these days!)**

**A Tangled Web (11)**

The familiar sight of her living room was a welcome comfort; noticing the boy sitting at the far end of the living room table, laptop on one side and chess board on the other, even more so. Sharon let the door close behind her and breathed a soft sigh as she stepped out of her heels.

"Hey."

She even managed a half-smile for him. "Hi." There was a plate next to him on the table with the remains of what might have once been a sandwich. Just the image of it made her stomach rumble quietly.

She could feel Rusty's eyes on her while she dropped her bag on one of the side tables and pulled the phone from her pocket.

"How was school today?" she asked as she walked over to her desk, and hoped that he'd actually give her a real answer, as opposed to –

"Fine," the boy said with his customary eloquence.

It wasn't as though the reply surprised her; her previous two teenagers had started rolling their eyes at the 'how was school?' question around seventh or eighth grade, if she remembered well. Sharon had heard dozens of offhand 'fine's from them, too, until she'd eventually instituted a rule that required at least three full sentences in reply to her asking about their day.

Maybe it was time to introduce Rusty to that rule.

"And…?" She plugged in her phone to charge while she prompted for more details.

"And?" At first he sounded genuinely confused as to what more she wanted – but then his tone changed, growing more wary. "I didn't get into any more fights or anything, if that's what you're asking."

Sharon sighed. It _wasn't_ what she'd been asking…or at least not entirely. Although now that he mentioned it… "Did you work things out with your classmate?"

His displeased grimace came as no surprise. "Yeah, Sharon," the boy muttered, "I _told_ you, it was no big deal". He flipped the lid shut on his laptop with a louder noise than strictly necessary.

She dropped it; she was too tired to do this tonight. "Alright, then." The glass of water she'd poured herself was doing nothing to allay her hunger. "What should we have for dinner?" she switched topics, trying for an inviting tone.

Rusty shrugged bleakly.

It was going to be one of those evenings, wasn't it?

"I'm going to get some rice started," she said, ignoring his obvious reticence. "We can have a stir fry with that." Not one of his favorite dishes, but it was the fastest thing she could think of, and easy to make. "Pork or chicken?"

Another shrug.

"Rusty."

The warning in her tone was enough to at least get him to make a verbal response. "Pork, I guess. Whatever." He watched while she pulled the rice out of one of the cabinets. "Do you want like… help, or anything?"

Not if help came with an attitude. "Did you finish your homework?" she asked instead.

Rusty rolled his eyes.

Yup, definitely one of those evenings.

* * *

Arguments like this hardly ever happened anymore – they'd learned to pick their battles with each other long ago, and over time had found that they were both much happier to avoid fights altogether. But lately there was something else between them. Something that caused their emotions to run just a little higher, their feelings to get hurt just a little easier. And sometimes, like tonight, that unspoken tension spilled over into the casual conversations where it didn't belong.

Thankfully, the worst of the tension had dissipated by the time they sat down to eat, although Sharon was still half-torn as to whether to revisit his earlier behavior or let it go. On the one hand, his recent tendency to not talk to her about whatever was bothering him was driving her crazy. There was a _reason_ that she felt so uneasy whenever he was out of her sight, and temper flare-ups like tonight's were a big part of that reason: something was clearly on Rusty's mind, and not being able to get it out of him was nerve-racking.

On the other hand, trying to push him to open up was only achieving the exact opposite effect. He was only pulling away harder, deflecting more; he must've told her half a dozen times in the last month to stop worrying so much about everything.

Which of course, only had the exact opposite effect on _her_.

And incidents like the one on Friday, when she'd inadvertently caught him trying to hide evidence of having gotten into a fight at school… well, that did not help with the whole 'not worrying' thing. It was just another instance in a long string of failures to get a straight story out of Rusty, and Sharon was beginning to lose her patience. _Of course_ she was going to worry, because he wasn't letting her in at all, and now was such a terrible, _terrible_ time to be pulling away, with his eighteenth birthday just over a month off and – she didn't even know how to talk to him about _that_, not when he seemed so evasive and increasingly eager to break off on his own, and the last thing she wanted was to put any _pressure_ on him, but the truth was–

"Are you sure we're not out?" Rusty's voice broke into her thoughts, muffled slightly by the fact that he'd basically stuck his head all the way inside the fridge. "I don't see it."

Sharon glanced over her shoulder, huffing with involuntary amusement as she noticed the way he was trying to enter the fridge whole, basically. "It should be on the second shelf."

"No, I already looked, it's not _here_, Sh – oh." She heard the sound of clanging glass and then Rusty extricated himself from the fridge, the hot sauce bottle in his hand. "Never mind, got it." He walked back over to the table and sat down again, and Sharon let out a mental sigh as he proceeded to pour about a gallon of hot sauce over his plate. She hoped that wasn't a reflection on her cooking.

She took another bite from her stir fry, chewing it a little too slowly. She'd been fairly starving on first arriving home, but in the meantime she'd lost some of her appetite. Probably to tiredness. It was just seven p.m., really, but it had been the longest couple of days.

She took a sip of her water glass and watched Rusty surreptitiously flick half a mushroom aside with a suspicious frown. When he caught her looking, he reluctantly pushed the mushroom back to the middle of the plate; then he pulled a face and pierced the offending vegetable with his fork and ate it in stoical resignation. The things he did for her.

Sharon's lips curled a little at the corners.

_Nothing's wrong, Sharon. Okay? Just… everything's fine. _

_Do I need to call St. Joe's?_

_What – no! You need to trust me when I say that nothing's wrong!_

Theirs was such a precarious balance, lately.

_I'm sorry for yelling at you. I didn't… I'm sorry, Sharon. It's… it was just a stupid fight at school, and I don't need you to worry about _every _little thing in my _life_, okay?_

But the truth was that no, it was not 'okay'.

It had been six weeks since they'd caught Wade Weller (the name still set her teeth on edge), five weeks since Rusty had gone back to school, and Sharon still couldn't be convinced, in her heart, that it was all over.

But then, it wasn't, was it? Stroh was still looming over them, and he'd already sent someone after Rusty once, what was to stop him from doing it again? So Rusty's testimony had been entered into official record – but that didn't mean anything. Stroh could want him harmed for the sake of revenge alone. He'd already tried to kill Rusty three times, each a closer call than the last. There was _no closer_ that it could possibly get, and how was she supposed to relax with that chilling knowledge wrapped around her heart like an icy chain?

And Rusty himself was so oblivious, so utterly unconcerned about his own safety. Oh they'd talked about it, and he'd said 'sorry' and 'yes' and 'careful' and all the right words she'd wanted to hear, and he'd meant every bit of it _at the time_… except then he'd still walked out of the house and nearly gotten them both killed not giving the right of way at an intersection on Vermont Avenue.

He gave his full name when he called for delivery and never turned on the lights in the garage since the switch was too far from his parking spot. He'd let two squatters into their building because he held the door open for strangers behind him. He constantly forgot to charge his phone so she lived with this low-level worry that he'd end up in some abandoned dark hole somewhere and wouldn't be able to call her for help because he'd been playing too much Candy Crush Saga.

Sometimes he was so unmindful that she wanted to strangle him.

Other times she was grateful for that very lack of caution, because it meant that he could still live without fear, even though so much evil had come after him already. He could still be a child, a thoughtless, imprudent child – and to give him that, she'd gladly have done all the worrying for him.

Only when she tried, he resented her for it.

She let out a soft, tired breath, and began to cut her broccoli into unnecessarily small pieces.

* * *

Rusty watched Sharon push the food around on her plate, and felt the sudden urge to bang his head against the table in frustration.

He wasn't _trying_ to be difficult. He was perfectly aware that he'd been an idiot earlier, and if she was mad at him now he couldn't blame her, because there had been like, _zero_ reason to get angry when she'd asked him about school. But… she was still thinking about that stupid fight on Friday, he could tell, and the more she brought it up the more he remembered it, and… he'd rather just have forgotten about it. If only Sharon would just... let it go.

It was stupid, anyway.

One of his idiot classmates had asked him what he was going to do when he was out of 'the system'.

It had taken Rusty a few seconds to figure out what system Joel was even talking about. Which was stupid, because he'd been asking himself that question … not _a lot_, exactly – since until last month he'd had more important things to worry about, such as a psycho trying to kill him – but… he'd been wondering, a little bit. More and more, as time went by and his concerns about the letter writer faded and Emma didn't talk about the trial and the testimony every. single. day, he'd been wondering what would happen when he graduated.

He didn't have a plan. Obviously he wasn't going off to college or anything, even Sharon wasn't holding it against him that he hadn't exactly had time to do applications between the awful security detail and being on house arrest and Taylor and Emma trying to constantly ruin his life. He couldn't tell if she was disappointed, or what, and it wasn't like he could _ask_ her… but anyway, even if Sharon understood and no one was too disappointed that he wasn't going to college next year – he didn't have _any_ plan. He didn't know what he wanted. He didn't know what Sharon wanted.

He didn't know anything.

_Are they like, gonna send you into witness protection when you turn 18 or something? 'cause that would be cool, dude._

That would _not_ 'be cool'.

And as such, he'd informed his stupid classmate that it wasn't any of his business and to shut the hell up.

Joel wasn't like, a bad guy, as preppy rich kids came. Retrospectively, Rusty didn't think that he'd meant to be obnoxious. Rusty _also_ hadn't meant to jump down Joel's throat.

But well, what had happened had happened, and then Joel's stupid friends had started 'ooooh'-ing and goading and before he knew it, the argument was getting out of control. Next recess it had just built more momentum, and after their last class of the day, they'd been unlucky enough to not manage to avoid each other on their way to the parking lot. By then neither of them had wanted to back down, and there had been all those stupid kids making stupid comments in the background, and Joel had sneered something about 'trouble kids' and Rusty had called him something to do with male anatomy and…

Well, he wasn't sure how exactly they'd ended up in a scuffle, but they'd both gone home with grass stains on their torn uniforms.

And then Sharon had caught him later that evening when he was trying to do laundry, and of course she'd seen the evidence of the fight and she'd wanted to know what had happened and – what was he supposed to _tell_ her, exactly?

He stabbed angrily at the last piece of meat on his plate, then sighed at Sharon's look of mild irritation. Great, now she was probably even _more_ unhappy with him. She was just going to worry more, and he was running out of ways to try to show her that he was fine, that she could trust him, that he could be an adult – but like… not _too_ much of an adult…?

Rusty didn't even know _what_ he wanted to prove to her, really.

Or why he felt so desperate to prove anything at all. It wasn't as though Sharon had ever asked that of him. But… he didn't know _why_, but there was still all this _pressure_ – and yes, technically it wasn't coming from her directly, but it still kind of was, because he was almost eighteen and 'the system' and…

He finished an entire glass of orange soda in one breath just thinking about that, and some of it went down the wrong way and made him choke. He broke into sudden coughing, sputtering a little soda over the table, and managing to hit the empty glass with his elbow, too.

"Rusty…" When he finally managed to stop coughing enough to look up, his eyes were teary and his nose hurt and Sharon was putting a glass of water in front of him and giving him a look that somehow managed to be both warm and chiding at the same time. "Take smaller sips, honey. Especially with carbonated drinks."

He was going to inform her that he knew how to drink soda, thanks, only the words came out as more coughs instead, and Sharon squeezed his shoulder lightly and Rusty ducked his head and decided to stay quiet, after all.

* * *

They worked in silence, after dinner, Rusty scribbling away on his latest math worksheet at the table, while Sharon had retreated to the sofa and, despite her tiredness, decided to spent some more time thinking about the convoluted Donnell case.

Buzz and Lt. Tao had made her copies of most of the materials they had, and she'd brought it all home in one thick folder. Of course, most of it was probably useless, phone records and background checks, incident reports and all sorts of other information that they'd already looked at that would probably lead nowhere.

Still.

The image of James Donnell's grieving parents flashed before her eyes. She didn't know if there was anything more to tell them about his death – but at least, she could take another look at things before the case was filed away in the bottom of some archive drawer. She couldn't change the fact that come morning, they'd be taking their son's body home, but she could give his case another evening. That much, she could do.

And she hadn't lied to Taylor when she'd said that she had other questions. The case had unfolded at a strange pace, first a slow trudge as everyone felt that a Saturday night jumper was hardly worth the agitation, then a frantic race as more evidence came to light supporting the bomb threat, and finally, when they'd failed to find a bomb or evidence of any more stolen chemicals, the whole thing had skidded to an abrupt end. It wasn't the normal rhythm of an investigation, so maybe that's what made Sharon so uncomfortable. At such an inconsistent pace, it was easy to miss things.

She browsed through Donnell's background first, dating back five years, to when he'd finished high school. He'd been in the top ten percent of his graduating class – a 'smart guy', as Danny had called him. There was nothing that stood out in the records, after that. He'd worked for a while at a public library and taken a few classes at a local community college, where he'd maintained a reasonable GPA and organized a couple of community events meant to raise social and environmental awareness; then, three years previous, he'd gotten the job with Animal Care at the USC.

He had no arrests. Nothing to indicate that he'd ever want to hurt anyone. His mother swore that he'd been a brilliant, goodhearted child, that as an adult he was planning to do something good with himself, even if he hadn't quite found his way yet. That he'd always had great ideas, wanted to make the world better…

Sharon switched to the page that detailed the discovery of the explosives in his locker.

There wasn't much there, either. The quantities and scientific names of the chemical compounds didn't mean much to her, but Lt. Tao had explained the basics, which was that they could've combined to create a blast – though if she remembered correctly, not one large enough to destroy an entire shopping center. The bomb squad hadn't found anything else, at his workplace or his home, and so they'd preliminarily concluded that he hadn't gotten to complete his plans to build a bomb.

That was the first thing that really bothered Sharon.

From what they could tell, James Donnell had planned to plant his explosives on Saturday evening, the day before the mall's grand opening. He'd asked Danny to get the delivery minivan, he'd told his friends that he'd meet them that night with grand plans in mind, he'd all but admitted to those plans during his intoxicated rant. So maybe he'd meant for the three of them to get high together then go break into the shopping center and place the bomb, or maybe he'd meant to just take the minivan and do it himself, or – it was even possible that he _wasn't_ intending to hurt people at all, maybe he just wanted to blow the place up before it opened. Whichever scenario was true, they all had one major assumption in common.

They all assumed that Donnell would have had the bomb ready by the time he'd jumped off the bridge Saturday night.

All evidence, however, pointed to the contrary.

So she didn't believe Andy's conclusion that Donnell had just celebrated victory too early, and his accidental overdosing on the tree frog toxin was what had foiled his plans. It was clear to Sharon that although James Donnell may have intended to blow up "Sun Plaza", when he'd stepped off that bridge, he hadn't had a bomb ready.

And she _really_ wanted to know why not.

But exhaustion was catching up, and her thoughts kept going in circles. She browsed almost absently through her notes from the interviews with Danny and Diego (just re-reading those made her headache come back), through the basic background check on Susan Crowley (no link whatsoever to Donnell), and the brief statement from the geochemistry researcher who'd reported the explosives missing from his lab. She skimmed the old "Zero Footprint" entries on the role of over-commercialized shopping centers in small local communities, and just like Lt. Tao, was impressed at the articulate and well-organized writing.

How had this young man ended up the way he had?

"Hey, Sharon…?"

She blinked against the dryness of her eyes, and glanced over to the table.

"Do you know what those tree frogs were called that your guy used to get high?"

…What?

"So, like, were they, uh… " Rusty frowned at his computer screen and stumbled over the name, "uh, 'dendrobates'? Or, ah…" a click, then another attempt at pronunciation, "…bufonidae?"

It took her a second to get over the ridiculousness of the question ."I thought you were doing homework," she admonished.

"I am! We have this report for biology on natural defense mechanisms, and everyone's doing like, chameleons or weird-looking insects or something, I bet no one's gonna do the frogs. So," he gave her a curious look, "do you know what kind of frogs that guy used?"

Sharon let out a long sigh. "Rusty, I don't know what they were called… and I'm not sure that it's a good idea for you to be using that particular example for your report, anyway," she added as an afterthought.

"What – why not? It's cool! Way better than like, moths or skunks…"

She pressed her lips together. "Just look somewhere else for inspiration," she suggested.

"_Why_?"

"Because… because I don't think that an ongoing criminal investigation is an appropriate source of ideas for your school assignments." There. That sounded perfectly reasonable.

Not to Rusty, apparently. He gave her a strange look. "Okay, how exactly is this inappropriate?" he wanted to know. "I'm not using anything from your 'ongoing criminal investigation', I was just asking about the name of the frogs! What's the big deal all of a sudden?"

Sharon didn't honestly know what the big deal was. She just knew that she didn't want Rusty in any way associated with this messy case, and she was really tired, and why couldn't he just do what she said for once and not argue so much?

She shifted in her seat and picked up the case file again. "I don't know what the frogs were called, Rusty," she reiterated eventually, in a tone that indicated the conversation was over. "If you really want to write your report on them, then you can just pick whichever species seems most relevant."

Even without looking she could tell he'd hunched his shoulders and adopted a bleak expression. "Yeah, fine." And he pulled his laptop closer, though she didn't hear him start typing again.

* * *

It took her all of thirty seconds to start feeling bad about the whole thing.

Yes, it was late and she'd had an impossibly long day, she hadn't slept properly for three days and her head hurt and she hadn't really had as much food as she should've at dinner… but none of that was Rusty's fault and he hadn't _actually_ done anything wrong in asking her a simple question. And okay, maybe she wasn't crazy about his ensuing attitude at her answer (would it _kill_ him to _listen_ to her without the prerequisite litany of objections and negotiations?), but she could've definitely reacted a little better.

Presently, he'd half turned away from her and was sulking silently, head bent over his notes and laptop.

Sharon sighed again.

"When's your biology report due?"

Rusty let just enough time pass without an answer to let her know that he was Not Happy with her. But he wouldn't plain ignore her either, so she just waited him out for the few seconds it took him to decide to talk.

"Thursday."

Sharon nodded a slow acknowledgment. "I'll ask Lt. Tao about the particular frog species tomorrow," she offered quietly. "I'm sure he'll know the specifics."

Her foster son gave her an unsure look. "Yeah… okay."

She smiled a little. "Okay."

Reaching for the wine glass on the coffee table, she took a couple of sips, then sank back against the sofa cushions in an attempt to ease the slight ache in her lower back. Her eyes drifted again to the details of the Donnell case, and she skimmed over the transcript of the young man's raving discourse on the bridge. '_Blow everything up_'... but then, he hadn't, had he? Why? Why hadn't he had a bomb ready? What part of his plans eluded her?

But she was too tired to make much sense of anything anymore, and too preoccupied with her own child to wonder about someone else's. Reluctantly, she gathered the few scattered pages back into the case folder, and set it on the coffee table with a weary motion. She wouldn't be getting any more answers for James Donnell's parents tonight. But the case would still be there come morning, and she could spend some quiet time reviewing it then.

* * *

She was only half-correct in her thinking.

The case _was_ still there in the morning. As she'd instructed the night before, the murder board remained intact, and someone had even written "Do Not Erase" in red marker at the top; she dropped off the case file on Lt. Flynn's desk, and used the first few minutes to reacquaint herself with the details on the board again.

But the 'quiet time' part, well, that didn't work out so well.

It _was_ quiet at first. Sharon had told the team that if they wanted a late start, they could have it, having been up before the crack of dawn on the two previous days, and so by nine a.m. the only ones there beside her were Lt. Tao, who had a ten a.m. court appearance to testify in a hearing, and Det. Sykes, who was still not comfortable enough to come in late, even when the boss said it was okay.

By nine-thirty the lieutenant had left for court, Amy had gone to get some coffee, and Sharon was about to head into her office, when she heard the sound of familiar heels in the doorway, and turned around.

"Andrea." Her eyebrows rose a little in surprise. "What are you doing here?" she shook her head, slightly confused; they didn't even have an ongoing case, why was a deputy DA in her murder room so early in the morning?

The blonde seemed unfazed – as usual, really. "Don't worry, I'm not here to spring any bad news on you. Just came to sign off on one of your deals…" she took a second to glance briefly into the folder she was carrying, "…Danny Murray."

This time, Sharon didn't even bother disguising her surprise. "They called _you_ in for that?" Was the DA's office really that busy, that they'd send one of their top DDAs to close a minor possession deal with a loopy twenty-two year old stoner?

Hobbs gave her a conspiratorial half-shrug: "It could be that I volunteered. It's been a slow week so far..." She arched her eyebrows at Sharon, "Although not for you, from what I hear."

The Captain let out a long sigh.

Andrea glanced over to the murder board. "This the Sixth Street Bridge bomb guy?" Her eyes zeroed in on Donnell's DMV photo. "He's a kid."

"Twenty-three," said Sharon. "Was."

The blonde gave her an understanding look.

"Is it true he tried to blow up a mall?"

Rumor travelled fast around the DA's office, it seemed. Sharon nodded. "We didn't find a bomb," she amended. "But yes."

Hobbs grimaced. "Guess it's a good thing he didn't get around to it, or your week _and_ mine would be a lot worse…" She stepped closer to the murder board, her gaze wandering over the details. "Psychoactive tree frogs..." She shook her head. "Just when you think you've seen everything."

"Rusty wants to write a report on them for school," Sharon found herself saying.

The DDA spared her a look of wry sympathy. "Of course he does."

Thank God, Andrea just _got_ it sometimes.

The woman turned away from the murder board, crossing her arms with a long sigh. "Okay, before I go scare your stoner into not growing weed on his roof anymore...I may have had an ulterior motive for volunteering to do this deal, after all." She pursed her lips, growing more serious, and Sharon was instantly wary.

"Andrea – am I about to hear those bad news you said you weren't going to spring on me?"

The blonde gave a lopsided nod. "We can be really optimistic and call it a heads-up."

_That_ did not sound good.

"Rumor has it that Roberto Rojas made a fuss," Hobbs continued, "and between that and a nasty press release from the USC, enough important toes were stepped on that the Mayor's sending someone over to snoop."

The Captain's wariness dissolved into incredulity. "_Here_?"

Andrea returned a commiserating eye-roll. "I know. Election year," she deadpanned, as if that explained everything, "His campaign manager has minions running down every whisper of bad publicity."

Sharon shook her head. This was just what she needed, some entitled bureaucratic lackey trying to throw his weight around. And here she'd been hoping for some quiet time.

"I wouldn't worry about it too much," said Hobbs, "whoever the Mayor sends will probably be gone by the end of the day. But I figured you'd probably appreciate knowing about it in advance. I thought Taylor might not ...get a chance... to share the news."

Right. "Somehow, it must have escaped the Chief's attention," Sharon agreed dryly, then she let out a sigh of her own. "Thank you for the heads-up."

The DDA just smiled, eyebrows arching. "Good luck. Try not to arrest this one on murder charges," she joked. "Although if you _do_… like I said, it's a slow week for me. You know where to find me." She smirked, and Sharon felt her lips curling into an amused smile despite her general irritation.

"I'll keep that in mind."

* * *

**I know a lot of you were missing Rusty - so... be careful what you wish for? *hangs head in shame* I am chronically unable to not drown these two in angst. I promise, they WILL communicate like normal people eventually. Using words and everything! ...one day.  
**

**Next chapter, Sharon receives the visit of the above-mentioned entitled bureaucratic lackey, and I'm sure we can all imagine how she will feel about it. And, she and Rusty might have one of their good days, for a change ;). (maybe. even when I start out with good intentions, sometimes their conversations slip down a terribly sad slope.)**

**Thank you for reading. **


	12. Grace

**Thanks for all your lovely comments. Another slightly long chapter ahead! **

**A Tangled Web (12)**

By that afternoon, the Major Crimes division did not want to arrest the assistant whom the Mayor had sent to look into the Donnell investigation.

They wanted to kill him.

" –can't believe this started out as a stoned jumper and now the local government's involved..." Standing near the back of the murder room, well out of hearing range of anyone but his partner, Lt. Flynn watched the short, balding assistant wave a pen in the Captain's face, as the two of them sat at the conference room table. She'd left the door open, so in addition to the expressive pantomime behind the glass walls, he and Provenza could make out most of the words that drifted out.

"_And since you found traces of explosives on his hands and evidence of foul play, protocol dictated that you –_"

"_There _was_ no evidence of foul play at the scene_." It must've been Sharon's fifth time saying it, to Andy's count. He could hear the exasperation in her voice. "_And we didn't find the traces of explosives until later._"

" _–and it took you almost entire day to ID him? Did you know that the Mayor authorized a mid-trimester budget increase this year, specifically for upgrading the facial and print search database?_"

Provenza gave him a wry look. "And being their usual charming selves, I might add."

Beyond the glass, the Captain looked increasingly unhappy. Flynn scratched his neck. "Do you I think I should –"

"No."

He glowered at his partner. "You didn't even hear what I was gonna ask!"

Provenza adopted a serious mien. "You're right. Please," he waved a ceremonious hand, "ask away."

"Well now you're just gonna say 'no' anyway."

The older lieutenant rolled his eyes. "Flynn, would you _quit_ acting like an idiot?"

"_Me_?"

"You know, I think those blood pressure meds are messing with your brain," Provenza grumbled. "Maybe you should go see another doctor."

"You're the one who insisted I started taking them in the first place! 'I take fifty pills a night with a glass of wine'", he mimicked with an eye roll of his own, "remember that?"

"Yeah, but they're not having any weird side effects on _me_. You, on the other hand –"

"_I'm_ not seeing any side-effects."

"Well _I'm_ seeing them, and I don't _like_ them, so just… cut it out." Provenza glared.

Andy crossed his arms. "You know, I don't understand why you're so negative lately. Maybe you should get a dog – I hear they help with mood."

"_Flynn_ –"

"Uhm, I don't mean to interrupt, but do you know when Captain Raydor and the Mayor's aide will be done…?"

The two lieutenants turned in unison to fix the person seated at the desk behind them with identical disgruntled glares.

They'd forgotten about him.

"Just wondering," said Officer Cooper, who was starting to look a little wary under their wry stares, "I mean my shift starts at four, but if I need to give my statement here I can push it back a little…"

Flynn and Provenza exchanged one of their 'can you believe this' looks.

* * *

Inside the conference room, the Captain was feeling a fair amount of disbelief, herself. The last vestiges of her patience were slipping away from her, fast. She narrowed her eyes at the irritating little man in front of her.

"We ran James Donnell's picture and prints through the 'upgraded database', and that is how long the ID took," she informed him. "If you have any suggestions for how to make that process go faster, Mr. Stanton, we'll be very grateful to hear them. Otherwise, you can read my team's report on –"

He interrupted her - again. "Captain Raydor, the Mayor sent me here to give him my _own_ report on how this investigation was handled," he said self-importantly, "and so I'll be very grateful if you let me draw my own conclusions."

Sharon pressed her lips together.

It wasn't as though she didn't know how to deal with bureaucrats – for a good part of her career she'd essentially _been_ a bureaucrat. She still had two rolls of literal red tape somewhere in the trunk of her car. However, precisely _because_ of her vast experience with the administrative side of their work, she knew very well the difference between wanting to do a thorough job and being just plain obnoxious, and Mr-Stanton-from-the-Mayor's-office (literally how the man had introduced himself) definitely fell far at the latter end of the spectrum.

"Frankly, Mr. Stanton, I'm not sure how much more I can help you with your conclusions," she said smoothly. "I've already briefed you on yesterday's events, and made available our case files and initial report. The final report should be on Chief Taylor's desk by tomorrow." She smiled agreeably. "Is there any aspect in particular that the Mayor wanted you to focus on?"

"The Mayor needs to know that the LAPD is following the new _threat prevention agenda_," he repeated the trite motto for what felt like the tenth time, "and he wanted me to report on your division's response to the potential crisis that arose Saturday night. So…" he flipped a couple of pages back on his clipboard, and read off some notes, "…you identified James Donnell shortly before one p.m. on Sunday…that is, over twelve hours from his death…"

Sharon hoped the warning look she sent him would be enough to prevent further commentary of the sort, although it hadn't worked too well so far.

Maybe Andrea was right. Maybe she _should_ arrest this one, too. Maybe then the local government would learn not to send pompous bureaucrats to waste her time.

"…and then your Lts. Provenza and Flynn conducted a standard search of his home, and found no evidence of a threat… ah, yes… and then you decided to bring in Mr. Rojas' son for questioning. May I ask, what prompted that decision?"

Of course this was related to 'that decision'.

"We had no information on Donnell's personal life, and interviewing friends and family in the case of a suspicious death is standard protocol," she replied in a composed tone. "Danny Murray and Diego Rojas were _both_ identified as having a personal connection to the victim, so we brought them in to see if they could give us more information on what James Donnell may have been planning."

"And did they?"

She had no idea how to even answer that question. Had they? Sort of. Somewhere the pile of goofy statements and inane questions and demands for fries, there had been some useful facts.

"They both indicated that Donnell planned to meet them around ten p.m. Saturday night, after finishing his rounds at the USC. He never showed – of course – and didn't let them know why he'd gone to the Sixth Street Bridge instead." Another question that she really wanted an answer to. "It also seemed from both their statements that he'd been hinting at some sort of plan, and he'd asked Murray to take the delivery minivan home from work that night."

The man hummed. "Ah… yes… and you thought his plan had to do with the shopping center…" He flipped another page in his clipboard, and Sharon absently wondered if Susan Crowley had _also_ filed a complaint. If she had, he didn't mention it. "But there wasn't actually a bomb, was there?"

Was that a note of _derision_ in his voice? Was he _trying_ to live up to the detestable bureaucrat stereotype? If anyone in FID had ever acted that way while Sharon was in charge, she'd have stuck them in interpersonal skills training before they knew what hit them.

Apparently the Mayor's office had more lax standards for its employees.

"We didn't find a bomb at the mall," she confirmed. "There were, however, explosives found in James Donnell's locker at the Animal Care facilities building. Based on th –"

"Ah, yes, the explosives," he interrupted yet again. "How did James Donnell obtain those, did your team look into that? The university Provost contacted us, you know, on behalf of the Board of Trustees, they weren't happy with the negative publicity…"

Ugh.

Somehow, Sharon managed to find more resources of calm and patience. She was glad she'd switched to herbal tea instead of coffee after Hobbs' visit.

"We requested all the labs with access to the type of substances found in Donnell's locker to conduct an inventory on Sunday morning. One of the researchers in the geochemistry department reported missing supplies, and –"

"How did Donnell get access to those supplies?"

She narrowed her eyes and lowered her chin a fraction, letting a few seconds pass in silence as an indication that he was treading on very thin ice with all the obnoxiousness and the interruptions. Sharon could recognize power games when she saw them, and regardless of what Mr. Stanton thought, he _didn't_ have the better position in their conversation and she wasn't in the mood to indulge whatever power trip he thought he was on.

He was the first to break eye contact, under the guise of flipping through his notes again.

"The supply cabinets were supposed to be locked," she replied eventually, "but they're shared between labs and the researcher who reported the theft thought that maybe the locking policy hadn't been strictly observed, or Donnell may have found a misplaced spare key."

"Did you find one at his house or in his locker?"

That might have been the first intelligent question he'd asked in three hours. "No," she acknowledged. "That was part of the reason why we notified university authorities to revise the safety protocols in their research labs."

"But no one else reported missing chemicals…?"

"No. And we couldn't find other evidence that Donnell would have purchased or obtained more of the same elsewhere. Our preliminary conclusion was that the explosives we found in his locker were the only ones he had access to." A reasonable conclusion, based on their facts, but it still felt like it didn't fit somehow. Really, all the pieces of this puzzle fit just slightly wrong.

"In that case, could you explain to me what was the need for –"

A sudden cacophony of noises from the murder room interrupted whatever criticism the Mayor's man was planning to make, and he and Sharon both looked over, searching for the source of the commotion.

* * *

In the doorway to the murder room, two people were picking themselves up from the floor.

"Sorry! I didn't see you…!" Rusty took a cautious step around the upturned cart and tried to help Buzz replace the rolls of film, cables and other equipment that had scattered all over the floor. "This thing needs like, better steering."

Buzz's lips pursed and he gave the boy a warning glare, which Rusty completely missed.

"Or like, airbags or something," he finished, replacing the last stack of DVDs on the rolling table and checking the floor to make sure they hadn't missed anything.

"I don't think it's the _table_ that needs better steering," Buzz said pointedly, but the boy's attention was already wandering, and as such the arch comment passed him completely by.

"Where's Sharon?"

Even as he asked, he spotted her in the conference room, sitting at the table with some boring-looking guy in a suit. She was looking in his direction, and despite the distance and the glass walls and the blinds, he could make out that half-amused, half-exasperated look that she gave him sometimes.

He found himself shrugging involuntarily in response. What? It wasn't _his_ fault that the cart had turned over.

* * *

Sharon sighed.

"Excuse me for a moment," she said with a diplomatic smile, and pushed her chair back.

Rusty began to make his way over as soon as he saw her get up, and met her right outside the conference room. "Hi."

Her first instinct was to give him a quick once-over to make sure he'd emerged unscathed from his battle with Buzz's rolling table. "Rusty," she greeted with a smile. "What are you doing here? I thought you had chess club after school today."

"Uh, yeah, it got cancelled because of some fire drill thing. And I have an Algebra test on Thursday, so I figured I could do my help session with Buzz today." He trailed off, suddenly in doubt. "I mean, if you guys are busy or whatever, I can go home and –"

"No, no," Sharon hurried to assure him, and caught herself taking an involuntary step to literally stand between him and the door. "Buzz isn't busy at all, I'm sure he'll be happy to help you. Just… go ahead." She waved a hand in the direction of his cubicle and tried not to look too eager. "Did you eat?"

Rusty rolled his eyes. "You do realize I can feed myself, Sharon, right?"

She matched his expression with a wry look. "I'm not sold on your understanding of the food pyramid."

Which only earned her another prototypical teenage eyeroll. "I'm just gonna go find Buzz, okay?"

Sharon nodded her acknowledgment with a small smile, and watched him as he walked away; even though he was being impossibly flip, she couldn't help but find it endearing. And – no point in lying to herself, she was _thrilled_ to have him in the cubicle ten steps away. Surrounded by officers.

Speaking of–

"Hi, Rusty."

She could tell from the confused expression on her teenager's face that he hadn't even noticed someone sitting at the desk he'd just walked past. So much for his promises to be more aware of his surroundings…

He stared at officer Cooper, as though almost surprised that the man was talking to him. "Uh, hey… Narc guy…"

Sharon managed to suppress a grimace at what was clearly his attempt to be civil and return the greeting. A paragon of social grace, that was her foster son.

Not that she felt particular sympathy for the young officer (was he really _still_ there? Dear _God_. The boy was relentless!). Still, maybe she needed to have a talk with Rusty about the proper way to address people whose names you don't know or can't remember.

The sound of a pointedly cleared throat came behind her."Captain – if you're done, do you think we can resume our discussion?" Mr. Stanton stood in the doorway behind her, arms crossed expectantly over his clipboard. "I do need to finish this by five, you know."

And since she was considerably more socially apt than Rusty, she even managed to give the man an almost genuine-looking smile as she followed him back into the conference room.

* * *

"Cooper."

Rusty blinked. "…what?"

"My _name_," the officer supplied. "Andrew Cooper. And I'm not a 'narc guy' anymore," he added almost regretfully, and pointed to his uniform. "This means patrol."

"Ok…?" What was he supposed to say to that? "Cool...?" Rusty made a move to continue on toward his cubicle, but…

"So how you doing?"

He paused again, and couldn't help a crooked look. Why was this guy talking to him?

"Nice to see the security detail's gone," Cooper continued. "Heard they caught the guy who was threatening you."

"Uh. Yeah."

"And you got to go back to school," he nodded to Rusty's St. Joe's uniform. "Bet you're happy about that, last time you seemed pretty eager to go back."

Yeah, well… that was last time. The boy shrugged. "It's fine."

"How long 'til you graduate?"

Rusty was still giving him a weird look. "May – no offense dude but, what's with the third degree? Is this like, a police thing, like you can't help yourself or something?"

The officer arched his eyebrows drolly. "Yeah, it's a police thing," he said. "We like to call it 'making polite conversation'."

Huh?

Whatever. "Yeah, listen… I got like, homework and stuff, so… what are you even doing here, anyway?" he thought to ask after a second.

"I was part of this case that Major Crimes is working on right now," Cooper replied. "They might need my statement, so I'm hanging around in case I can help."

Privately, Rusty doubted that Sharon needed this guy's help, but hey, what did he know? He shrugged again. "Cool. Uh, anyway… I should like, go find Buzz so…yeah."

He waved a vague hand toward the supercubicle at the far end of the room and marched off without further commentary, leaving the young cop to roll his eyes a little, behind him:

"…aaand nice seeing you, too…" Cooper shrugged to himself, and resumed watching Captain Raydor and the Mayor's office guy through the conference room glass.

* * *

" –and you thought he was targeting 'Sun Plaza' because of a flier found at his house, and his … blog entries?"

"His friend Danny Murray confirmed it for us, too," Sharon added, "but yes."

"But there wasn't a bomb there." Restating the same thing over and over seemed to be a hobby for Mr. Stanton.

"No."

More flipping through the notes. "You also closed down traffic on the Sixth Street Bridge to have a bomb squad check it. Why, if Donnell's friend said he was planning to bomb the mall?"

At least he wasn't running her through the calculations of how much it had cost to close the bridge. Yet.

"Danny didn't mention a bomb," Sharon corrected, "he only said that James Donnell had talked about plans related to the opening shopping center, and that those plans were supposed to be executed Saturday night."

At least, that's what she'd gotten from the young man's convoluted statements; there may have been more useful information in there, but between his inability to articulate his thoughts, and his conviction that 'Jimmy was a good guy' who wanted to help people, it had been difficult to get much more out of their discussion.

"But that wasn't until after I'd sent a bomb squad to search the bridge," she carried on her explanation. "It was the site of Donnell's death, and we still didn't know why he was there. He also mentioned the bridge twice in his blog; it could have plausibly been a target."

"Mentioned it in his blog…? That's not in here."

"We're still putting together the final report," she reminded him. "I can ask Lt. Tao to pull up the relevant blog entries, if you'd like to look them over."

The man cleared his throat. "Uh, yes… of course. Right. What did those entries say?"

Maybe not the most relevant question, but fair enough. "One was in relation to the city's growing water problem –"

"The Mayor's upgraded environmental policies project a reduction in water consumption of nine percent over the next five years."

Sharon stared at him.

The man cleared his throat again. "Please, Captain – go on."

Biting her lips, she managed a smile that hopefully didn't look _too_ sarcastic. "The first entry was from about a year ago," she resumed in a calm tone, "and it mentioned an old project designed to filter and distribute water from the LA river more efficiently… I believe the Sixth Street Aqueduct was mentioned as one of the key points in the proposed water distribution network."

"I never heard of such a project."

Sharon shrugged. "The blog said it had been abandoned due to financial and logistic complications, about five years ago. I don't believe it's actually in effect right now; Lt. Tao found no records of the aqueduct currently being used in any major water supply or irrigation systems."

"So why was this guy there, then?"

She clasped her hands above the table and admitted, "We don't know for sure."

"But you didn't find a bomb, or anything else suspicious around the bridge."

"No."

"Or at the new shopping center. Or the university."

She just shook her head in reply. The man lowered his clipboard.

"You'll want to include that when you make your statement to the press."

Sharon closed her eyes briefly. Civility, she reminded herself. Plus, a murdered local government employee in her conference room might look bad.

Still, it was a relief when Mr. Stanton asked to talk to other members of her team. Not that she wanted to inflict the man on _any_ of them – but she really needed a break.

* * *

Only her trip to the break room turned out a little different from the relaxing breather she was expecting.

She'd been too preoccupied, walking down the corridor, to pay much attention to whatever snippets of voices drifted down to her, so it was a mild surprise to enter the break room to the sound of laughter.

It was even more surprising to notice Rusty and Officer Cooper sitting across from each other at the table, the traces of mirth still on both their faces.

Hadn't she just seen her foster son walk over to his cubicle? Well, no, now that she thought about it, that had been at least half hour before. She'd assumed he'd be there doing his homework... but maybe he'd felt like taking a break too, nothing wrong with that, he could get a soda if he wanted to…

The two of them looked really chummy.

Sharon opened her mouth, and paused.

A sudden vague unease stirred up in her, though she couldn't tell exactly why. They weren't doing anything wrong, right? What were they even talking about? Whatever conversation they'd been having, it had ceased when she'd walked in, and now Rusty was looking a little uncomfortable under what must have been her unintentionally intense stare. The young cop was just watching her expectantly, with a polite smile.

Well she had to say _something_ now…

"Officer Cooper. I thought Lt. Provenza explained that we didn't need another statement from you."

"Yes Ma'am," he nodded. "But my shift doesn't start for another…twenty minutes, so I wasn't in a hurry. Thought I'd hang around, see if I could help you with anything during the audit from the Mayor's office."

"It's not an audit." She gave him a restrained smile. "And that's very considerate of you, but there's no need to spend your free time on this. You can go get ready for your shift."

"I don't mind," he assured. "Plus, I heard you were still looking into the Donnell case –"

That surprised Sharon a little, because how would he even have heard about that? Then she remembered the big 'Do Not Erase' sign on the murder board, and realized that that must've been how.

" –if you need some extra manpower to tie up the loose ends, I'm already familiar with the case, _and_ Officer Ramirez and I were first at the scene, so if you want…"

Sharon sighed, half-tuning him out. She'd possibly never met someone so singularly determined to get out of patrol duty. "Thank you," she said eventually, "but that's not necessary." What she wanted most at the moment, actually, was for him to get out of her break room, off her floor, and away from – just… away.

Instead, the young officer continued to just sit there, making no move whatsoever to leave, despite a number of what Sharon considered very plain hints to do so. What else did he need, floor arrows lighting up all the way to the door?

She pressed her lips together and turned to Rusty to ask pointedly:

"Did you finish your homework?"

The boy looked profoundly disgruntled with her (but then he usually looked that way when she asked him about homework) as he mumbled a 'no' and pulled his soda can closer.

Sharon hummed, "Isn't Buzz waiting for you to work on your algebra questions?"

Another vaguely confirmatory mumble, accompanied by a look of sulky embarrassment. (Oh. Oh, well she wasn't trying to _embarrass_ him…! Wait, why would he be embarrassed?)

There were another few seconds of awkward silence, during which Sharon turned her pointed gaze on Cooper once more. Finally, _finally_ the young man seemed to get the hint, as he pushed his chair back and got up, with some comment about having to get ready for his shift. It was about time, too…

He grabbed his coffee cup from the table, and nodded at her foster son. "See you around, Rusty."

…what?

What…?

Sharon could feel her cheeks getting a little warmer.

She stuck her hands in her pockets, and smiled tightly and followed the young officer with a keen gaze as he walked around the break room table toward the door. He nodded to her on his way out ("Ma'am."), and she returned the nod, serenely, and didn't let even the slightest flash of emotion show on her face as he finally walked out.

Once he was gone, she turned to Rusty with the same composed visage, and was not entirely surprised to find him giving her an unhappy look.

* * *

Was Sharon for real? Had she seriously just – just… was she _serious_?!

And to make it all worse, she was obviously trying to wear her 'I'm fine with everything' face, when in fact she looked impossibly twitchy, and she was actually. turning. red.

He'd seen it on her face, that moment when she'd gone from being slightly surprised to find him in the break room with Cooper, to thinking… _whatever_ she was thinking that had caused her expression to grow alarmed the way it had. Maybe the officer hadn't noticed, but Rusty knew people, and he _especially_ knew Sharon, and who did she even think she was fooling, with the tense smile and the too-smooth tone and the hands in her pockets? That was like, her way of _broadcasting_ to the world that she was the exact opposite of fine, basically!

And seeing it caused an uncomfortable sort of anxiety to roll around in his stomach, and Rusty wasn't even sure why. Also, he was _mad_, because had she seriously just scared Cooper away and asked Rusty about homework, really?! What the hell!

"So am I like, not allowed to have friends now? 'cause whatever, I mean if that's like, a new rule or something…"

He didn't feel even a little bad to see Sharon's shoulders slump. "Rusty. Of course I'm happy to see you making new friends…"

He glowered at her. "Yeah, you looked real happy just now, Sharon." It was hard to hold anything in. "What the hell!"

"Rusty, language –"

"_Seriously_?!"

" –and don't yell, please."

He crossed his arms so tight his ribs started to hurt. "Fine," he said resentfully, "fine, Sharon, well if I'm not allowed to yell then you're not allowed to treat me like a stupid kid! What the – what were you… I have enough time to do my homework! I was just _talking_, okay? _God_, Sharon."

"Okay, I can see that you're upset –"

"I," he railed, "am not 'upset', okay? You just need to like – _chill_. I wasn't even doing anything!"

"I know –"

"Like – I get it, Sharon. I know you're like… whatever you're thinking," he didn't even know what to call it, "but I wasn't doing anything, and it's not _fair_ that I can't even have a normal conversation in the break room without you thinking that I'm like, doing something wrong!"

"Rusty," she adopted that quiet tone she used in their arguments sometimes, the one he hated because it made him feel bad about getting so worked up, which was _totally unfair_... "I didn't think that you were doing anything wrong."

"What was all of _that_ about then?" he waved an angry hand at the door.

Good question.

Sharon bit her lips.

Fortunately, she was saved from having to think too hard about a reasonable reply by the sound of the opening door.

"Oh – excuse me."

The two of them turned to glance toward the source of the voice, only to find the Mayor's aide in the doorway, wearing a look far more curious than would've been appropriate.

"We were just looking for you, Captain…" (behind him, Provenza rolled his eyes and gave her a half-apologetic shrug), "didn't realize you were... otherwise occupied."

Rusty grabbed his soda and stood up. "I'm just gonna go do _homework_," he told Sharon.

"Oh, don't leave on my account, young man," said Mr. Stanton, waving a hand. "Captain, I didn't mean to interrupt your conversation, I only wanted to ask you for a few more clarifications"

Great. Still, she gave the man a polite smile. "Just a moment, please. I'll be right with you." Then she nodded for the teenager to step out of break room and followed right after; she stopped him a few steps down the corridor, where they were afforded a little privacy. "Rusty, if you're upset about something, we can discuss it – calmly and _with civility_."

He hunched his shoulders and shrugged. "Whatever…I'm not upset, Sharon, just… if you have a problem, you should just tell me. Not like… scare off people I'm trying to have conversations with and treat me like I'm twelve."

Sharon sighed. So much for civility, but at least he was trying. "That wasn't my intention."

Another gloomy shrug.

"And honey, I don't have a problem." Well – she had a lot of problems, but he wasn't the cause of any of them. He was the _object_ of a fair amount of them, but that was another issue entirely.

"Fine," Rusty muttered, completely unconvinced, and she let out a second sigh.

This was _definitely_ not turning out to be the relaxing break she'd been hoping for.

"Kids, right?" the Mayor's aide uninvitedly commiserated as they walked back into the murder room a minute later. "I'm sure your son will come around, Captain."

A millisecond later, she noticed Rusty standing by Buzz's desk – _well_ within earshot, and she wished she could've _gagged_ the inopportune Mr. Stanton, because the last thing they needed was more fuel added to the fire, and of course Rusty had looked up, indignation all over his face –

"I'm _not_ a _kid_!" he retorted loudly, before grabbing his notebook and soda off Buzz's desk and stalking off toward his cubicle.

Sharon couldn't decide how to feel about that reaction.

* * *

"Okay – but Captain, I'm afraid I still don't understand why this case isn't properly closed yet." Mr. Stanton pointed to the murder board with an obstinate expression. "The Mayor needs the LAPD to make a statement to the press about all of this – the sooner the better –, you _found_ the explosives, there _was_ no bomb, the guy's dead, his parents took his body away this morning… what's the delay?"

Sharon gave him another restrained smile. "I just have a few more questions," she said for the hundredth time.

"Well, it's..." Stanton checked his watch, "almost five o'clock now, and like I said this needs to be over… and you should really be getting that statement ready for the media," he hummed thoughtfully, "nothing big, just a two-minute version of all this, that makes it clear there was no one else involved in this young man's plot, not the USC, not the mall and definitely not Roberto Rojas' son… It's too late for the six o'clock news," he mused, "but if you hurry you can probably make it in time for the later evening editions…"

Sharon pressed her lips together. "Mr. Stanton, that's not going to happen."

"Captain, I don't think you understand, this is a very sensitive situation. This case is right on the verge of degenerating into a publicity nightmare, and the Mayor needs –"

"I understand the Mayor's concerns very well," she assured. "And we'll be making a discrete press release tomorrow, if that's what he wants. However, that can't happen before the final report is written on this case, with all the details included –"

"The details aren't what's important here…!"

"Generally, in our cases, the details are _exactly_ what's important," she explained with more patience than she was feeling.

"This case is obviously over," the man stated, and Sharon crossed her arms with deliberate slowness.

"I'm afraid that's _my_ call," she said in a smooth, low voice, "not yours, Mr. Stanton. Now, if you –"

"Captain Raydor," he protested, "this young man's hare-brained scheme could become a PR disaster for our office, if we don't smooth down all the feathers you've ruffled searching for nonexistent bombs all over the place!"

"Next time, we'll make sure to be appropriately less thorough," drawled Provenza from his desk. "We'll only search _some_ of the places where we think a nutcase might've hidden a bomb."

The short man only bristled further. "Chief Taylor promised full cooperation –"

"And I'm sure that's exactly what you're getting." With his usual uncanny timing, the Assistant Chief walked into the murder room, taking in everyone's expressions at a glance. He smiled pleasantly. "What seems to be the problem here, Mr. Stanton?"

"Chief, I don't think I'm making myself understood here. The Mayor appreciates the efforts of the Major Crimes division in establishing that James Donnell wasn't a threat to public safety," he said with a pointed look to Sharon, "but now that that question's been answered, the priority is to avoid any publicity backlash that could affect our campaign efforts."

"Oh, and here I thought that was the priority all along," muttered Flynn, earning himself a warning glare from Taylor.

"All I'm asking for," Mr. Stanton continued, "is a little _diplomacy_."

Sharon thought she was exercising a great deal of diplomacy in not rolling her eyes.

"Of course," the Chief agreed. "I assure you that there is no need for concern, and you can tell the Mayor that, too. Captain Raydor – may we speak in your office for a moment?"

This was quickly promising to be a repeat of the previous day's scene with Diego's father.

* * *

"Chief …"

"Captain," he didn't even let her protest, "you told me you needed another couple of hours to wrap up all your questions. That was _yesterday_."

"It's true," she acknowledged, "but –"

"Have you discovered anything that might suggest _anything_, in the meantime?"

Sharon knew where the discussion was going. "No."

"Then you'll understand why I'm telling you now that your grace period has expired," he said firmly. "The case is over. Close it. I want the final report, on my desk, by tomorrow morning. _Tomorrow morning_, Captain," he reiterated when she looked ready to argue further. "End of discussion."

That was as close to a direct order as things came, and there was nothing to be gained by insisting further. Sharon conceded with a silent nod, and assured him that he would have the report in the morning, as requested.

But after the Chief had left her office, and he and the Mayor's aide had both walked out of the murder room, Provenza showed up in her doorway.

"So, I suppose we've been officially told to drop it and make nice."

Sharon let a few seconds pass in thoughtful silence, then leaned back slightly in her chair. "Do you think Chief Taylor's right? Am I just pushing for more answers because I feel bad for that young man's parents?"

The lieutenant took a couple of steps inside the office, then shrugged in response."Probably. Sure doesn't seem to be because of _the evidence_… unless you've been looking at a different murder board than the rest of us."

"You also told Stanton that there were more outstanding questions," she pointed out dryly.

"Yes, but I only said it because he kept trying to get me to say the opposite. On principle," he smirked, "I try to avoid being helpful to the local bureaucrats at all costs."

Sharon grimaced, not a doubt in her mind that he was actually serious. He would. Then she shook her head:

"Maybe you're right," she admitted. "But I still feel like we might be missing something. I don't know... I suppose I thought that spending more time looking things over might give us some more answers…"

"Look, Captain… you and I both know there's no such thing as a case where we get all the answers we'd like. Sooner or later you just have to take what you've got and stop thinking about the rest."

With a quiet sigh, she nodded.

"That being said…"

Sharon looked at him again, tilting her head a little curiously.

"Nearly forty years on this job, you learn how to trust your gut every now and then."

Her eyebrows arched a fraction. "Lieutenant," she murmured, "are you suggesting that I disregard the evidence, and everyone else's opinions…?"

Provenza shrugged again. "Evidence is only as good as the people looking at it. As for our opinions, well – I suppose there are _some_ who might say that you're 'in charge' around here," he accompanied the words with air quotes and an eye roll, "so technically, it could be argued that _your_ opinion also carries a certain weight. Not that I _agree_, mind you," he clarified, "but lesser folk than I have been known to think that way."

Sharon's lips curled into an amused smirk. "I see. Thank you, Lieutenant, that's a very… enlightening perspective."

He inclined his head and acknowledged gravely, "Well I _have_ been called that, by some."

She thought for another few moments, then nodded, and got up from her desk.

"Just to make clear," Provenza added as an afterthought, "all of what I just said applies to regular work hours _only_. None of it was meant as a message that I'd like to spend another night chasing down Kermit's wacky plans... so that look on your face better not signify any intention of making us see sundown – or god-forbid sun_rise_ – in this building again."

The Captain spared him one last smile over her shoulder, before walking out of her office without an actual reply. He groaned under his breath and followed her into the murder room.

* * *

"Chief Taylor wants the final report by tomorrow morning. I'd like to give this one last run, before we consider the case officially closed and I sit down to write that report."

It had taken Sharon less than a minute to briefly outline the situation for all of them; she'd also had to explain that she couldn't file any more overtime for the Donnell case, and even so no one had batted an eye.

"I didn't have anything better to do tonight, anyway," said Lt. Flynn.

Tao shrugged, brushing the dust from his keyboard. "Kathy's out of town for a seminar, I was going to stay after hours and clean up my desk."

"Ma'am, can we order dinner?" asked Sanchez.

Provenza rolled his eyes, and picked up his crossword puzzle in silent protest, and no one was the least bit fazed.

"What's still bothering you about the case, Captain?" Amy asked.

Sharon glanced again at the murder board, and brought up her mental list of questions.

"I want to know why James Donnell was at that bridge," she said determinedly. "I want to know why he took those explosives when he did and why they were still in his locker. And I want to know how he got to the bridge, too," she added as an afterthought, "and why we didn't find his bike at the scene, _or_ his wallet. Let's start with these… we'll work our way out from there."

* * *

**I may have had a little too much fun with grumpy Provenza in this chapter ;). Next up, we'll be building serious momentum toward finally solving the mystery of the case! (but don't worry, the answers aren't coming yet, so feel free to keep on guessing! I love hearing your guesses ;)!)**

**Thank you all for reading! **


	13. Reverie

**A Tangled Web (13)  
**

_Saturday, 12:40 a.m._

Wisps of black smoke still rose here and there, escaping through shattered windows and cracks in the charred walls. The desolate crumbling structure drew a macabre outline against the night sky.

" – _finished clearing the debris from bottom floor_ –"

" –_no signs of life_ –"

" –_clear_."

In the crowd below, radios buzzed with spontaneous bursts of information on several channels. The night was dark, but dozens of flashlights and floodlights, as well as the flashing sirens of multiple service vehicles, bathed the area in a blinding glow. A utility vehicle beeped somewhere nearby.

Uniformed officers, rescue crew members as well as several other people of ambiguous affiliation milled about with purposeful, if agitated, attitudes.

"We can access the top floor from the east side, that wall's holding –"

" –contained damage, but I'm not liking these tremors. Could be that the whole area is unstable…"

" – get the goddamn press away from here –"

"It's been over four hours, I want to know when we're going to see some results." Assistant Chief Taylor had abandoned his usually saccharine tone for a menacing low baritone, as he accosted one of the rescue team coordinators. "This operation is taking too long. You need to prioritize getting out the survivors –"

"Sir, there are no survivors." The man wiped his dusty hands on his pants. "Like I said, we saw no heat signatures or any other evidence that there was anyone inside at all. We can't hurry this up or the whole thing will collapse even more, and …"

"Now, you listen to me," Taylor's voice dropped even lower. "I know for a fact that there were at least three people in there when that bomb went off, and the fact that you haven't found them yet doesn't look good for you and your team." He gave the man a scathing look. "So I suggest you stop trying to convince me that there's no one alive in there, and _find_ those people – before I start questioning your competence even more than I already am."

The rescue team leader looked unhappy with the scolding, but he went off without further protest. Taylor pulled on the hem of his jacket, and directed another somber gaze to the scorched husk of the building, surrounded by the intervention crews.

* * *

_Three days before..._

_ Wednesday, 11:10 a.m. _

"Captain Raydor."

The Assistant Chief sounded displeased, as she'd imagined he would. He paused right inside the doorway to the murder room and gave Sharon a slightly irritated look.

"Has Robbery-Homicide sent someone over yet, about that double shooting?"

She clasped her hands behind her back and gave him her most pleasant mien. "Not yet, Chief."

He surveyed the murder room with an almost suspicious look. "A detective should be up here any minute, to brief you and your team on the details. As I mentioned this morning, they're a little short-staffed. They asked Major Crimes to lend a hand."

"We'll do our best to help out," smiled Sharon.

"I'm sure," Taylor said dryly. "Captain – can I see you in my office, please?"

She was too old to feel chastised by that phrase. From his seat, Provenza gave her a lopsided shrug as though to say, 'you knew this was coming'. Sharon allowed one of her shoulders to twitch almost imperceptibly in return, and followed the Chief out.

Her folder lay open on the desk when they got to his office. He picked up the file inside and waved it at her. "What is this?"

"It's the updated report on the Donnell case," she said – unnecessarily. Taylor knew just fine what it _was_. He just wanted an intro to what was likely to be a detailed expression of his dissatisfaction.

"I didn't think I'd have to explain to you, Captain Raydor, that the 'Assessment' section of an after-action report is for analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of your team's actions," he scoffed, "with a view toward improved performance on future operations. It is _not_ –" (he flipped to the offending page in the report) " – a place to introduce wild eleventh hour speculations."

"It's also the section for discussing any avenues that weren't explored in the investigation of the case," Sharon pointed out, "and potential loose ends or leads that didn't fully pan out that might be relevant in the event of a reopening of the case…"

Taylor looked halfway between angry and exasperated. "This case isn't going to _be_ reopened," he said, "because it's over. The man is dead, of _natural causes_. We didn't find a bomb. There was no evidence to indicate any other threat." He shook his head. "Do you know, I was in a meeting with the Mayor this morning, in which I _assured_ him that the aftermath of this case would be handled discreetly and with no potential for negative publicity." His lips pursed in a wry expression. "Imagine my surprise when I come back and find that not only have you continued to dig into an already solved case, but you hijacked a patrol car and had them stake out a bridge for half the night."

"Not at all, Chief." Sharon's composed smile remained in place. "They merely included the bridge on their patrol route, so they'd drive past it a couple of times an hour, nothing more."

"And if I ask, will I find that their scheduled route was actually halfway across the city, and they had to change it to accommodate you, Captain?"

"We asked if they were already patrolling that general area," she defended. "One of the officers assured us that they were."

Which was true.

Sort of.

* * *

_The previous evening..._

_Tuesday, 6 p.m._

" – and according to the responding officers' report, they never checked around the bridge for Donnell's bike. Guess they didn't really need to, at the time…"

"No," Sharon acknowledged Lt. Tao's point, "but it might have told us something more about why the young man was there... It might be worth checking, still." Only with the Chief unequivocally having ended her team's involvement in the case, she couldn't exactly authorize a surveillance action. On the other hand… "Besides, if something _is_ going on at or near that bridge, I'd like to keep an eye on it."

But _how_?

"It's not that far from here," Tao offered half-heartedly, "we could at least drive over and check for the bike… but keeping an eye on the bridge might be trickier."

"Try 'impossible'," Andy muttered. "Taylor's never gonna approve a minute of overtime for this."

Provenza hummed loudly. "Well, gee," he drawled with mock thoughtfulness, "if only we knew someone on patrol, who's on duty right now, and who'd really, really, _really love_ to help us."

Sharon groaned mentally at his pointed look.

It took her a few seconds to weigh the pros and cons and wonder if instead she might not send Julio and Amy after all. Possibly sensing her line of thought, and disinclined to leave right before their pizza delivery arrived, Sanchez piped in:

"If that kid's on duty now, Ma'am, I think we should tell him to go look."

He was, unfortunately, right.

"Alright. If someone can please contact…" (another mental sigh) "…Officer Cooper, and see if he and his partner can check the Sixth Street bridge, and maybe include it on their route for tonight. Oh – but make sure to ask if they're already in the area, first."

Provenza let out an amused huff. "You heard the Captain, Sanchez. Contact their patrol car, ask if they 'happen' to be in the area we need them in. Oh – and if the kid says no, they can't help us," he added, "you might want to call down to the FID office next and ask if they need to borrow some space heaters. Because I assume it'll have frozen over."

Sharon gave him a dry glare.

* * *

_Wednesday, 11:10 a.m. _

"Captain." Unaware of her private musings, Taylor was still leafing irritatedly through the report. "Leaving aside for the moment your unorthodox requisitioning of resources – what would possess you to actually include two whole paragraphs revisiting the notion of 'suspicious death' over 'accidental overdose'? And don't even get me started on this ridiculous idea of an accomplice… you do know that the Mayor's office is going to want to read this, correct?"

"Chief, the report says that the case of the potential bomb threat is officially closed," said Sharon. " We can prepare a statement to the press to that effect, as the Mayor wanted..."

"If the case is closed," Taylor returned wryly, "why am I currently reading a sentence that includes the words 'unclear circumstances', 'discrepancies' and 'further investigation'?"

"Taking another look at the circumstances surrounding Donnell's death, we found some further discrepancies that pointed to the possibility –"

"_What_ discrepancies?" He sounded exasperated. "Captain, what could you possibly have uncovered since 5 p.m. yesterday, that you didn't see in three days of investigating this case?"

"Our entire investigation prioritized preventing the bomb threat," Sharon explained. "But last night, after everything was over, we took the opportunity to look at the case from a different angle…"

Taylor sighed. "What angle?"

* * *

_Tuesday, 5:45 p.m._

"Forget about the bomb."

That earned her a few crooked looks from her team. Fair enough, the potential bomb threat had been the driving force behind the case all along – but …

"At the moment, the evidence consistently points to James Donnell not having carried out any sort of bomb plot, regardless of whether he planned to do so or not," she admitted. "So let's put that whole angle aside, and look at this just as a suspicious death." To make the point, she took an eraser and removed the quotation marks around the word 'Victim' on the board.

"Uh, Captain…" Andy rolled his chair slightly to face her better, "the guy jumped off a bridge 'cause he was high. If anything, that's the least suspicious part of this whole thing."

Sharon hummed noncommittally.

"Ma'am." Sanchez looked up from a pile of notes on his desk. "Sykes and I just went over the timeline of Donnell's schedule on Saturday again. If you put everything together, it doesn't look like he walked to the bridge from the university."

"The last entry on his sign-in sheet at work was nine forty-one p.m. in the one of the colony rooms in the Genetics building," Amy explained, having rolled her chair over to Julio's desk. "The records from the electronic card readers show that he accessed the frog lab in Biochemistry, at nine fifty-three. Biochemistry and Genetics are in the same building," she added, "so it wouldn't take long to walk from one place to the other."

Sharon pondered the information for a moment, then remembered something else. "The lab that reported the stolen supplies … that was in the same building, too?"

"Geochemistry." Sanchez checked his notes again. "And yes. Explains why the guy might've targeted it. Easy to get to."

She nodded. "So, shortly before ten p.m. on Saturday," she recapped, "James Donnell got to the frog lab, where presumably he extracted the toxin that he meant to use together with his friends later that night… Lt. Tao, how long would the extraction process take, do you think?"

The question gave him pause only for a moment, then the lieutenant shrugged. "Assuming he knew what he was doing – which I guess he did, Danny told us he'd done it several times before… fifteen-twenty minutes? Ballpark…?"

"The footage from the cameras at the building entrance show him leaving right before ten-thirty," Sanchez noted. "So that timing all works out. The video from the bridge first puts him there at eleven forty-six."

"There are over six miles between the research building and the Sixth Street aqueduct," said Tao. "At regular walking speed – and considering his intoxicated state, Donnell was probably slower than that – it would take an hour and a half or more to make the trip. Especially across downtown LA at midnight on a Saturday… I'd say closer to an hour forty-five."

"Okay. So he _didn't_ walk over," concluded Flynn.

Mike was looking something up on his computer. "And… there are no bus routes that would get him there in that time frame, either, not between those hours on a Saturday." He looked up from his screen. "He did have a bike though. It only takes about half hour to bike over from the USC to the bridge, so he'd have had plenty of time."

"_Too much_ time," Sharon murmured. "If he biked over, or if someone drove him, there's almost an hour before his death that we can't account for. And since he had his employee ID with him on leaving the USC , but we didn't find any wallet or phone on him, it must be sometime in that hour that he lost them."

They considered that thought for a few silent moments.

"Maybe he got mugged," Andy suggested. "That'd explain the delay, and why we didn't find his stuff. Hey… scrawny kid, biking alone across downtown at that hour?" He shrugged. "Easy target."

"His body _was_ probably too damaged from the fall to tell if he'd been beaten before jumping," Tao admitted, "but the enhanced video from the bridge scene didn't show any visible injuries, though. And his credit card or phone weren't used since then…"

* * *

_Wednesday, 11:15 a.m._

"So maybe he stopped by a diner, or just took a roundabout route to the bridge." Taylor shook his head, replacing her report on the desk. "Just because there are a few extra minutes to account for doesn't make his death suspicious. The lab confirmed it was the frog toxin in his tissue, and there's ample evidence that he used it voluntarily."

"Dr. Morales said that his last meal had been several hours before his death," Sharon addressed that point first. "And given the severity of the toxin poisoning, he wouldn't have had much appetite, anyway. As to his voluntary use of the toxin… that's actually one of the things that bothers me, Chief."

He pursed his lips, a silent indication that the fact that things were still bothering her, was bothering _him_.

"Danny and Diego both said that Donnell had extracted the frog toxin at least half a dozen times before, for the past year. He'd researched how to do it, and once he figured it out, he was cautious and clever enough to never get caught. None of the researchers in the frog lab suspected anything," she reminded him, "and they work with those animals all the time. So how did Donnell suddenly get so careless as to essentially kill himself with an overdose?"

"That's why it's called an 'accidental' overdose."

It was Sharon's turn to sound unconvinced. "Maybe. There's more…"

* * *

_Tuesday, 7:10 p.m. _

" – can add that to the list of our unanswered questions..." Why the Sixth Street Bridge? Why the unaccounted time? Why not have the explosives assembled, or at least take them with him? And the fact that James Donnell's parents and friends swore that he was so smart and good and wanted to help people…

Sharon wasn't even sure anymore why she wanted to know so badly what had happened to the young man, but a part of her couldn't bear the thought of letting his story be remembered as what it was now. Somehow, it felt important to figure out the rest. The elusive missing page that would've reconciled evidence and character testimonies, and made the picture whole.

Her eyes wandered across the murder board again, and she simply, _frustratingly_, couldn't see it. "There must be something else we're missing here."

But they'd been at it for over two hours – not even counting the three days they'd worked on it already – and all they were coming up with were more loose ends, sprouting from all sides of this case. Small, nagging, seemingly unconnected loose ends, so easy to dismiss…

"Uh, Captain…?" Lt. Tao looked up from his computer. "I don't know if this is important, but I did find one thing that the bridge and the mall might've had in common…"

Everyone paused what they were doing, directing their attention to him. Provenza took another slice of pizza from the last not-yet-finished box.

"I looked into that old, abandoned irrigation project some more," said Mike. "Like I said earlier, there isn't a lot available on it through the online public records, but the city does have to keep open records of capital and recovery projects, so I got a couple of things from that."

For everyone else's benefit, he recapped the information that he'd already given Sharon earlier in the day.

"This was first proposed ten years ago to one of the old urban planning commissions, and it was meant to establish an underground water network that would redistribute water more efficiently from the LA river to several inner city parks, which usually have irrigation issues due to poor placement and funding."

"Sounds just like the kind of thing this Donnell guy would've been into," remarked Flynn.

"Only ten years ago, he'd have been…what, thirteen?" Sanchez shrugged. "Pretty sure he wasn't involved then, Sir."

"The project was spearheaded by a team of civil engineers, architects and so on," Tao continued, "and it got approved in 2005… then they did some 'preliminary survey work' – I suppose that means looking into existing piping and sewer systems, land surveys and so on – and built some of the ground infrastructure… but then the notes in the archives say that the project was abandoned in 2007 because of 'logistic and financial challenges'."

"Go figure. " Andy rolled his eyes.

Sharon nodded. She'd already heard most of that from Mike that morning. "What does it have to do with the bridge?" she asked. "Or the shopping center?"

"Well – you know how earlier I said that the water redistribution network was based on a series of nodes, and the Sixth Street Bridge was one of them?" The lieutenant pulled up a document on his computer. "I dug a little deeper, and found an old record of the proposed infrastructure. Checking the addresses of the other nodes, it turns out that another one of them was supposed to be right around where 'Sun Plaza' is, now, by that part of the LA river."

There was a brief silence as they all processed the new information.

"What does that mean?" Flynn asked eventually, but Mike just shrugged, unsure:

"Uh… nothing really, as far as I can tell. This all happened over six years ago, and according to these records, they didn't really get around to building most of the proposed infrastructure before the city pulled the plug on the project… but it _is_ still a little weird to be a coincidence…"

* * *

_Wednesday, 11:20 a.m._

"It's not just a coincidence."

Things rarely were, in their line of work.

"There's a connection," said Sharon, "between the bridge and the shopping center, and that abandoned irrigation project. James Donnell saw that connection, and somehow it made him want to plant a bomb at 'Sun Plaza', and then _somehow_, it ended in his death."

Taylor let out an annoyed breath. "I'm not saying that it's not possible. But it's still irrelevant. The man is dead, the threat is gone. And we can stay here and speculate until I'm old enough to retire, but it's still going to be just that," he raised his eyebrows at her, "_wild speculation_ …much as the 'Assessment' section of your report."

"With respect, Chief," a phrase meant to remind her to mind her tone when she was losing her temper, "I don't think James Donnell intended to hurt all those people at the mall. There's more to his story, more to why he did what he did, and we owe it to him and to his family to understand –"

"No." The man spoke over her in a firm voice. "We don't _owe_ them anything of the sort, and especially not wasting the time and resources of the Major Crimes division to set anyone's mind at ease. Captain – this has gone beyond thoroughness or sympathy for that young man's bereaved parents," he warned. "Your perspective on this is clearly not objective anymore...and I'm starting to wonder what kind of personal issues you're bringing into this."

Her own eyebrows arched in response, and she adopted her own look of warning. "This isn't about personal issues –"

"Isn't it?" Taylor took off his glasses with deliberate slowness, placing them on his desk before turning back to her. "How are things going with Rusty?"

Instantly on alert, Sharon narrowed her eyes. "Fine," she said, a chill to her tone. "This has nothing to do with Rusty."

"I don't pretend to be an expert at this, Captain," he said, "but it seems to me that it might. If you're preoccupied… Well, Mr. Stanton casually mentioned to me that he heard you two arguing yesterday…"

_What_? She couldn't help the flash of indignation across her face. Who did that man think he was? He didn't even know them!

"Are you having…difficulties?" the Chief continued. "Is the boy getting into any trouble?"

Sharon couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Rusty is _fine_," she repeated, and the man's ambiguous hum only served to make her angrier.

"If you say so, Captain. The boy's birthday is coming up, isn't it?" There was no mistaking the suggestiveness in his tone. "Have you thought about what will happen when he turns eighteen…? Talked to him about his… options…?"

Her hands automatically sough her pockets, her fingers curling tensely into fists.

She really hated Chief Taylor sometimes.

* * *

They'd all assumed that the chat with Taylor wouldn't go _great_ – really, most conversations with the Chief left one with a mild feeling of frustration, but the Captain's expression when she walked back into the murder room still made a surprising sight. That wasn't 'mildly frustrated'; she looked furious. Or as close to furious as she'd allow herself to look, which meant that her lips were set in a thin line and her shoulders were rigid and her eyes tense around the corners.

She was making a beeline for her office, when the newly-arrived Robbery-Homicide detective called out to her. "Captain Raydor…"

To her credit, she managed to not turn him to stone as she looked over.

Andy shot his partner a wary look, to which Provenza returned an imperceptible shrug. Everyone else waited quietly.

"Detective…" Her tone was a good octave lower than normal, and her hands firmly hidden in her pockets (what the hell _had_ Taylor said to her?), but she did keep a more or less composed expression as she faced the man. "I assume you're here about the double shooting case."

"Uh… yes, Ma'am." Good, even he must've read the signs enough to tread carefully. "We were uh, just waiting for you before I started briefing your team…"

There were a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, then the Captain let out a slow breath. "I'll be with you in just a moment," she told him, then resumed her way to her office, where she spent an inordinate amount of time with her back to the glass walls, under the guise of going through her bag.

When she came out again, pretty much nothing had changed in her expression, but she was holding a notepad and a pen, and a cup of what Andy assumed was really cold coffee. He silently moved the files occupying the corner of his desk, leaving her enough space to lean against it and set the cup down.

"Everything okay?" he asked in a low voice, as the Robbery-Homicide detective began a lengthy exposition that included the word "bullet" way too many times.

Sharon just glanced over, her lips pressing together, and gave him a 'fine' that managed to successfully convey the exact opposite, then she reached for her cup so abruptly that a few drops spilled over onto the side of his desk.

* * *

He only caught her alone later in the afternoon, after some hours spent chasing down leads for Robbery-Homicide and yelling at that asshole Ross who did everything backwards just to spite them. As if it hadn't been him who'd asked for help from Major Crimes in the first place. No good deed and so on.

Sharon was in the break room when he walked in, pouring hot water over what he hoped was herbal tea. With the tension that had been rolling off of her in waves, caffeine did not seem like a good idea. She looked over her shoulder at the sound of his footsteps, and a bit of her mask slipped back on. Her body straightened a little, the faraway expression replaced by something more reserved. But she smiled when he asked if there was any peppermint tea left, and reached in the nearest drawer to pull out a teabag for him.

"Did we get the video footage from the club side entrance?"

Of course she started by talking shop. "Buzz is looking through it now. We got a partial license plate number already, Robbery-Homicide is running through the list of possible vehicles."

The Captain nodded. "Good…" Despite her best efforts, she still looked a little distracted. Maybe a little tired – as they all were. It had been a hell of a long week. And she'd probably stayed up late the previous night as well, writing that final report on the whole bomb threat case…

"You know we're gonna keep looking into this," Andy told her. "What happened to that Donnell kid. You're right, those are a lot of questions we should answer … and when we do, maybe you'll be able to tell his parents that he was a good kid, after all." A stupid kid, for sure, but maybe not a killer.

His reassurance however fell short; Sharon only shook her head. "They're burying him tomorrow," she said. "Whatever else we find out – if there even _is_ anything to find out," (there was a note of doubt in her tone that definitely hadn't been there the previous evening), "it's not going to make a difference to them."

Andy let the hot water fill his own cup. "It might." She made no reply, instead stirring the honey into her tea with absent motions, and he let a few seconds pass in silence, before asking: "So what did Taylor say? Did you get in trouble?"

He'd meant it partly as a joke, but when Sharon averted her eyes, he felt a surge of anger. It wasn't something entirely new, he'd experienced this a couple of times before. When Taylor had laid into Sharon for not doing things more like Chief Johnson, once… and another time when SIS Lt. Cooper had said the words 'we just drove off', and Andy had wanted nothing more than to reach through the phone and strangle him…

"The Chief thinks I let my preoccupation with Rusty color how I saw the Donnell case."

That took him aback for a second. It wasn't what he'd been expecting. His irritation on her behalf mixed with a small degree of confusion. What did the kid have to do with any of this?

"He thinks I'm… projecting, somehow. That I'm insisting to look further into this as a way to keep my mind off my … personal concerns," Sharon continued, and now Andy couldn't help rolling his eyes:

"Yeah, well we all know Taylor's an idiot."

"He might be right."

She'd spoken so quietly that he'd barely caught it, but after a second she picked up her mug and, staring thoughtfully at the table top, repeated:

"I think… to some extent… there could be a bit of truth to that."

The admission surprised him again, but only for a moment. He gave her a sympathetic look. "You're worried about the kid?"

"I'm always _worried_ about him," Sharon replied, matter-of-factly.

Wasn't that the truth. "But now there's no reason to," Andy said. "He's fine, we got that psycho who was sending the letters, he's back in school… he's safe. You don't have to worry anymore."

He wasn't entirely sure about the almost pitying look she gave him.

"There's something else…?"

Sharon hesitated for a long moment, long enough in fact to make him think she'd retreat from the conversation instead of saying anything else. But in the end she took another sip of her tea, and spoke again. "Rusty's birthday is coming up."

It took Andy a second to make sure he'd heard her right. That was way too much concern over what to get the kid as a birthday present, right? Sure, eighteen was a pretty important birthday, but hardly worth th – "Oh."

_Oh_.

Her phone buzzed, then, and checking the screen she smiled in a strained sort of way. The lieutenant's eyes drifted to the clock display on the microwave. Three-twelve p.m. That was probably the kid, texting to tell her that he'd made it home from school. All of them on the team had figured out what those regular afternoon texts were, eventually.

When Sharon met his gaze again, there was still that heartbreaking concern in her eyes, and Andy had no idea what to say.

* * *

" –license plate came back as belonging to a car owned by one of the victims' former employers, and… uh-oh, that's interesting." Lt. Tao's eyebrows arched. "Apparently he's also victim number one's former husband. Ronald Miller."

Sykes matched his expression. "Motive?"

"I suppose we'll have to look at their divorce settlement to answer that."

"What?" Robbery-Homicide's detective Ross frowned. "That's impossible, we checked backgrounds for both victims and none of them had ever been married."

"Your check might've missed it because they were married in New York… and divorced in Massachusetts," Tao explained. "I usually run searches through the national database, exactly for this kind of reason... I mean, it's not _frequent_ that we see it, but… sometimes it pays off."

Ross looked a little sour. "I'll have my men bring this guy in," he said, and he and the younger Robbery-Homicide detective stepped outside to pass the message on to their own division.

Tao craned his neck to make sure the two were out of earshot, then turned to the Captain. "I've put in a request with City archives to get the full file on that old irrigation project, but their regular response time is about a couple of weeks unless I file under 'ongoing investigation'," he grimaced, "and then I'd need to give them the case reference number, and… well…"

Sharon saw his point immediately. "You were right not to do it," she nodded. "I'll see if there's another way to get an expedited request in. Thank you."

She started to turn away, then paused:

"Lieutenant… I appreciate that you're still looking into this – all of you," she glanced at everyone else in the room. "But it's important that we don't let it interfere with our current investigation. It's… " she sighed. "Chief Taylor's right. That case is officially closed, and we can _not_ use our resources on it to the detriment of an ongoing case."

"Don't worry, Ma'am," Julio piped in from his desk. "We're sticking to the rules."

"As always," joked Flynn.

Sharon smiled a little, and dipped her head. "Thank you." There was another moment of silence, then she sighed quietly to herself and picked up the coroner's report on the two shooting victims, and Robbery-Homicide's briefing statement. "Please let me know as soon as the ex-husband is brought in."

With that, she began to walk over to her office, her expression still holding a vague note of preoccupation. With everyone else going back to their tasks, Provenza took the opportunity of the brief moment of privacy to lean toward Flynn.

"So what'd Taylor say to her to put her in that mood earlier?"

Also following the Captain with his eyes, Andy only half-got the question. "She's worried he's gonna leave."

Provenza looked at him like he was crazy. "Taylor?"

"What? No," Flynn finally caught up. "the kid. Rusty." He focused his attention on the conversation, turning fully to his partner and rolling his eyes. "Sharon thinks he'll want to go once he's officially out of the system. Apparently some _idiot_ told her that the kid's gonna turn eighteen and just up and leave to look for his mom."

Silence.

"What."

"Yeah – can you believe this?"

Provenza groaned.

* * *

**Many thanks to everyone who read and reviewed the last chapter. I love hearing from you guys :).  
**

**Sorry if the timeline of this chapter was a little wacky or confusing. Another one of those things that are sometimes fun to play with, but don't always work...! If anyone was confused - the present time in the story is Wednesday. The Tuesday scenes were from the previous evening (i.e. where we left off last chapter.) The Saturday scenes were from the future and please don't come after me with pitchforks and torches :D! (Seriously, save them until we actually get to that chapter. You'll feel much more strongly about murdering me, then, trust me.)  
**

**Thank you all for reading :). **


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